Delhi Govt. Has Not Conducted More Than 50% Of The Tests For COVID19 And Has Failed To Keep Its Own Target: Delhi HC [Read Order]

While making this observation, the Division Bench of Justice Hima Kohli and Justice Subramonium Prasad also directed the Delhi Government to submit an affidavit stating the minutes of the meeting of the Committee constituted by the Lieutenant Governor to look into the preparedness of Delhi to deal with COVID19.

The order has come in a PIL seeking proper testing of COVID patients in both government and private hospitals and laboratories.

Today, the Petitioner argued that that when the private hospitals have been declared as COVID-19 hospitals, they too should be permitted to conduct the said test on both, symptomatic and asymptomatic persons who seek admission for COVID-19 treatment or for scheduled/emergent surgeries/procedures, as already directed by this Court.

On the other hand, the Delhi Government submitted that for the present, Rapid Antigen testing has been permitted by the ICMR to be undertaken only in Containment zones or Hotspots and the government hospitals alone are authorized to conduct the said test.

It was further informed by the Delhi Government that it has targeted conducting 22,000 Rapid Antigen tests per day (2,000 tests x 11 Districts).

In a previous order in the same PIL, the Delhi High Court had directed the Delhi Government to ensure that the accredited labs in Delhi, which are testing samples for COVID19 infection, should be giving reports within a period of 24/48 hours.

The court had further directed the Delhi Government to ensure that its website is continually updated to regularly reflect the correct number of tests that are being conducted for COVID-19 in Delhi, mention the number of cases that are positive or negative and state the number of results that are pending after the tests are conducted.

The court will next take up the matter on June 25.

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