Gandhinagar: Gujarat government has ordered private laboratories in the State to stop doing Covid19 tests with immediate effect. The tests now onward will be possible only in government test facilities.

Explaining the rational behind this decision, Principal Secretary, Department of Health, Govt of Gujarat, Dr. Jayanti Ravi in her daily online briefing said, ‘it’s neither scalable nor sustainable to test entire population and it’s improper as per the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) guideline also. As per ICMR guideline, only symptomatic persons with symptoms should be tested but it was noticed that private labs were testing asymptomatic patients also and levying high charges. A decision has been taken to investigate how many symptomatic and asymptomatic persons were tested (by private labs).’

She further said, ‘the government offers Covid19 tests for free but tests are allowed only in case of symptomatic persons.’

She said, the Superintendent of Civil hospital, Asarwa Mr. Prabhakar will give clearance for Covid19 test after checking whether the case is symptomatic or asymptomatic. However for hospitalized patient who is planned to undergo operation can go for Covid19 test.

It’s worth noting that as many as 11 private laboratories in Gujarat have been permitted to do Covid19 tests. The charges to be levied are fixed by the government and there has no complain surfaced so far regarding levy of higher charges by any of these labs. Initially, the State government had made provision of need to get clearance before each test. Later another provision was also made that reports can be issued after clearance of govt.

In a notable case, a person from Vadodara, journalist by profession was detected Covid19 positive in government lab test, but when he went to a private lab in Ahmedabad, he was detected Covid19 negative.

ICMR website still shows the list of permitted private labs in Gujarat including Unipath, Supratech, SN Genelab, Pangenomics, Zydus hospitals, Apollo hospitals, Green Cross Genetics, Sunflower Lab in Ahmedabad and Toprani, Divine Lab, Bhailal Amin hospital, Parlul Institute (PIMSR) in Vadodara.

DeshGujarat