Delhi: Manpower crunch, infected professionals delaying COVID test reports

Amid rising COVID-19 cases in Delhi, private diagnostic labs are witnessing a spike their staff contracting the infection, snowballing into delayed tests results.

"There is definitely a surge, many laboratory data entry personnel and lab people are being tested positive for COVID-19," Dr Gauri Agarwal, Founder Director of Genestrings Labs told .

"There is a continuous hiring process, you have to train the people and get them into the system... problem is with the manpower not with the machines," she added.

Delhi, on Saturday, recorded 24,375 fresh COVID-19 cases and 167 deaths in one day. The positivity rate in the UT has crossed 24 per cent.

Nearly 99,000 coronavirus tests were conducted on Friday while 82,569 tests were carried out on the preceeding.

"COVID testing has gone up and there is a massive surge in calls for home collection which is difficult to handle. There is no problem with infrastructure or machines. Problem lies with govt-mandated rule to do ICMR entry within 24 hours," Agarwal said.

Sunday was the fourth consecutive day of over 2 lakh cases in the country. As many as 2,61,500 new COVID-19 cases have been reported in India in the last 24 hours. With this, the total number of cases has gone up to 1,47,88,109 and death toll has reached 1,75,649.

Dr Gauri says that the second wave of COVID-19 seems to have affeceted youngsters mostly- that's what the sample collection by her lab indicates.

"A lot of young people testing COVID positive as compared to old people. Symptoms are different this time. Many are complaining of dry mouth, gastrointestinal issues, nausea, loose tools, red eyes and headache. Everyone does not complain of fever," she said.

"Last time there was a lockdown. This time there is no precautions taken. Everybody is on street yet the fact that there no beds, no medicines," she added.

She also cautioned people to follow COVID-appropriate behaviour, avoid cloth mask and instead use N95 mask.

( With inputs from ANI )