Kriti Agrawal
The Bombay High Court’s Nagpur Bench on Thursday ordered medical laboratories conducting RT-PCR tests for COVID detection to ensure that test results are sent to the concerned patient through WhatsApp immediately, regardless of the outcome.
Patients were having difficulty getting RT-PCR test results was pointed out to a Bench of Justices ZA Haq and Amit B Borkar.
The delay in delivering the reports to patients was attributed to a sluggish server preventing the reports from being uploaded to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) portal.
Advocate SP Bhandarkar, an Amicus Curiae in the case, indicated that patient reports, whether positive or negative, could be sent to patients directly through WhatsApp without the need to first upload them to the ICMR portal.
The Court ordered that within 24 hours of making the reports accessible to the patients through WhatsApp, the positive reports be submitted to the ICMR portal.
The Court also stated that the records of patients who tested negative should be submitted to the ICMR portal within 7 days.
The Court warned that if the laboratories do not follow these instructions, the authorities would be able to take appropriate action against the laboratories.
The Bench was hearing a Suo Motu PIL on various issues relating to COVID-19 management in Nagpur and other cities within the bench’s territorial jurisdiction.
The Bench has been closely monitoring COVID facilities in cities such as Mumbai in order to make recommendations to the State government and local governments on how to best handle the pandemic.
The Suo motu case was filed last year, and the benches that have heard the PIL so far have dealt with the following COVID-related issues:
When dealing with patients who test positive for COVID-19, ambulances from BVG, overstocking of oxygen in some hospitals, resulting in shortages elsewhere, patients are assigned beds, drugs that can save a person’s life are readily available, a scarcity of medical personnel, the costs of the care services, at institutional quarantine centers, the patients’ and staff’s safety is paramount, as is the staff’s, reports from RT-PCR are available.
The question of non-availability of Remdesivir and Tocilizumab injections, which are used in the treatment of COVID positive patients, as well as a shortage of oxygen cylinders, was also discussed by the Court last week.
For easy access to information, the Bench recommended developing a centralized portal that would include patient information as well as the number of doses of specific medicines provided to patients. The Nagpur Collector told the Court that such a portal will be launched right away and widely advertised.
Bhandarkar also informed the Court about allegations of vandalism at hospitals where patients died. The Court ordered the use of force and 24-hour patrolling to address the issue.
The Court also asked the media and press to exercise caution when reporting on unfortunate events in quarantine centers, as this might cause unnecessary distress among people, worsening the situation.
The Bench had previously established a COVID-19 committee to consider the emergency situation created by the COVID-19 pandemic’s outbreak in Nagpur.
The Committee made some recommendations, which the Court asked the authorities to consider in its April 8 order.
Meanwhile, concerned about the safety of patients and staff attending to them in institutional quarantine, the Bench instructed the committee to devise steps for routine inspection of all institutional quarantine.
They also ordered that CCTV cameras be mounted in all institutional quarantine centers’ corridors to track quarantined patients’ movements.