Hospitals turn down test-seekers

Many hospitals are struggling to carry out COVID-19 tests as hundreds of people with symptoms are rushing to the facilities after the IEDCR was relieved of the task of collecting samples from home and of coordinating the testing job.

People queued in front of dedicated COVID-19 testing hospitals in the capital on Tuesday as on Monday where they had to wait for hours in the scorching sun with social distancing hardly maintained.

The situation has worsened and the number of people queuing for the test has multiplied recently as the authorities said that the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research would no longer collect samples from home.

Health experts fear that the gatherings and queues pose the risk of further spread of the novel coronavirus.

 

Several hundred people thronged Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Tuesday for COVID-19 test, but the hospital authorities declined to test them saying that they would only carry out tests on the admitted patients.

DMCH director brigadier general AKM Nasir Uddin said that they did not have the capacity to test both admitted patients and outdoor cases simultaneously.

The people in the queue became furious as they heard about the hospital’s decision.

‘Hospital guards in front of the coronavirus unit told us to go to the virology department for testing. But doctors there told us that they only tested samples from admitted patients,’ a test-seeker said.

‘The government has stopped sample collection and the hospitals are also refusing us. Where should we go?’ he despaired.

Some patients at the DMCH said that they had first gone to Matuail Institute of Mother and Child Health but doctors there told them to go to the DMCH for the test.

‘But the DMCH is denying us the test,’ one of them said.

The DMCH virology department is mainly responsible for carrying out COVID-19 tests.

Department professor Sultana Shahana Banu told New Age that they were struggling due to manpower shortage and were not in a position to do tests on outside samples.

She pointed out that they had trained doctors and technologists in carrying out tests but many of them were sent to other hospitals according to government instructions.

The professor feared that such gatherings and queues at the hospital for test might further spread the virus.

‘Some of them might have virus in their bodies, the rest might not. Due to these gatherings there might be transmission of the virus to uninfected people,’ she said.

Meanwhile, 25 people have so far died in the DMCH COVID-19 unit in last four days with two of the deceased tested positive for the virus, said DMCH assistant director Alauddin Al Azad.

‘The rest of the dead had COVID-19 symptoms,’ he said, adding that the hospital could not carry out the COVID-19 test on them.

Doctors at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University said that the pressure for coronavirus test was increasing there everyday as people kept thronging the facility for test.

Many people visit hospitals for test as they fail to reach the dedicated COVID-19 hotlines despite repeated attempts, a doctor said.

The BSMMU virology department has so far tested 5,590 people and 1,562 of them have tested positive for COVID-19, virology department chief Saif Ullah Munshi said.

He disclosed that they used to take 300 samples daily and performed the test on them.

But the hospital is currently experiencing a surge in the number of test-seekers as hundreds of people are thronging it.

Several hundred people wait in queues for hours and many of them have to leave without test done, doctors there said.

On Sunday, an elderly man died in front of the BSMMU hours after he waited in a queue for the COVID-19 test.

Professor Saif Ullah said that they were unable to expand their testing capacity due to manpower crisis.

‘We had trained 13 people for carrying out tests but six of them were sent to other hospitals. Now we have to work with half the original manpower,’ he said.

Mugda General Hospital, which also treats COVID-19 patients, has recently been facing a huge rush for COVID-19 test.

The hospital has the capacity to test around 200 cases daily, but more than a thousand people throng the hospital for test regularly, said Manilal Aich Litu, coordinator of the Mugda Hospital COVID-19 treatment committee.

Many people, he said, have to go back without a test carried out as the doctors there cannot cope with the rush of test-seekers due to manpower and PCR machine crises.

Asked, Nasima Sultana, additional director general of the Directorate General of Health Services, said that the IEDCR stopped collecting samples from home but DGHS teams were still collecting.

She also said that they were setting up booths in the capital and other areas so that people could go there for COVID-19 test.

She, however, admitted that gatherings and queues at hospitals and booths increased the risk of new infections.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net