Plea before Supreme Court to make Covid-19 testing free

At present, private laboratories are allowed to charge people to test for coronavirus though the same is capped at ₹4500.

A petition was filed before the Supreme Court on Tuesday praying testing facility for the coronavirus disease should be provided free of cost to all citizens at all private and government testing laboratories.

The 130 functional government laboratories across India have tested 42,788 samples so far, of which 4346 were tested on Monday alone.(File Photo)

At present, private laboratories are allowed to charge people to test for coronavirus though the same is capped at ₹4500.

“It is urgently required that the respondents have to provide free of cost testing for Covid-19 to all citizens,” the petition stated.

The petitioner, advocate Shashank Deo Sudhi, submitted that government hospitals are packed to capacity and it has become difficult for the common man to get himself tested in the government labs.

With no alternative in sight, they are forced to pay money to get the tests done at private labs. Saddling ordinary citizens with such financial burden effectively deprives them of their accessibility to medical facilities and is violative of right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, the petitioner submitted.

Sudhi also pointed out there are only 114 identified testing centres for testing Covid-19 in an entire country with a population of 1.3 billion people.

Due to this, he claimed, adequate testing was not happening to make the situation dangerous with each passing day.

He, therefore, prayed that testing facilities should be ramped up so as to ensure that adequate tests are done and all tests relating to Covid-19 must be conducted by pathological laboratories accredited with National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL).

“The impending danger of the Covid-19 is extremely serious given the deprived population of the country and testing is the only way to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic,” the petition said.

“The private hospitals including laboratories have an important role to play in containing the scale of the pandemic by extending philanthropic services in the hour of national crisis,” it added.

Government labs testing for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) seem to be already burdened by the sample load, with many hospitals saying that the lag in receiving test results has increased to three days.

The 130 functional government laboratories across India have tested 42,788 samples so far, of which 4346 were tested on Monday alone.

Of the 49 private labs approved for testing, 399 tests were conducted on Monday, and in total these chains have done about 14,00 tests since they were allowed to test, starting on March 21.

All laboratories performing Covid-19 tests have a capacity of conducting 13,000 tests per day. The 49 private chains have around 16,000 collection centres.