Ban on private labs in Mumbai may hit COVID-19 battle

The testing rate is likely to slow down, report Pavan Lall and Sohini Das.  

With two of the largest private diagnostics labs now barred from testing Covid-19 samples, the testing rate in Mumbai and Thane is likely to slow down, say industry players.

According to Maharashtra government data, about 47 per cent tests in the state have been done at private labs.

For Mumbai city, which is the most affected, it is over 40 per cent, claim sources. However, its testing rate hovered around 4,000 per day in May, and has failed to pick up in June.

While Maharashtra's overall positive rate was around 16 per cent, for Mumbai it was double at around 30 per cent. Civic officials had earlier said that this was due to targeted testing from fever clinics etc. However, industry sources allege that the city administration wants to keep the testing rate low so as to not get many positives.

“More tests simply mean more positives and that would put more pressure on the health infrastructure. It is not just private labs that at times cause delay in giving reports, but at times we get queries from public labs to test samples that have been lying with them for over a week. It is curious that only large private labs have been targeted, while the smaller ones seem to be doing fine," said the CEO of a national chain, which also operates in Mumbai.

Meanwhile, the nation's largest private largest diagnostics labs find themselves on the receiving end of government penalties for non-compliance of stipulated rules and regulations that pertain to the turnaround time for Covid-19 tests as well as the process of reporting patient data to the Indian Council of Medical Research.

However, company officials say that the punishment is not befitting the crime with total shutdowns hurting patients who have been told by doctors to get tested.

Despite several attempts, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation officials could not be reached for a comment on the same.

Mumbai-based Metropolis Healthcare is the latest company to have been told by the state to stop testing for Covid-19 tests after complaints that it took longer than the required 24 hours to submit test results. On June 9, Metropolis, which tests a few thousand Covid-19 patients daily was barred from collecting Covid-19 samples for a month in Mumbai. According to company officials, testing was also shut for a couple of weeks in April for similar reasons.

Metropolis isn’t alone. Earlier, Thyrocare Technologies too, was told to stop collecting samples for potential Covid-19 cases across the nation in 15 pin codes because it was testing asymptomatic patients in some instances and due to quality concerns in others, its officials said.

In Delhi too, SRL Diagnostics was told to stop testing certain categories of patients at the end of May for a few days, officials say.

Metropolis managing director Ameera Shah said that some of her employees were unwell which led to a delay in data collection and its submission to relevant authorities, which led to the show cause notice and the revoking of service. "A complete stopping of collection of samples in Mumbai for Covid-19 tests, means that residents of the city are denied the right to test in the city, which is a lose-lose for all in the face of the epidemic," she said.

"The solution is for each individual municipal corporation to decide where the Covid-19 numbers are going, figure out timelines and then enforce accountability with penalties commensurate to the violations," Shah said, adding that taking fewer samples until the authorities were satisfied was one option.

Thyrocare MD Arokiaswamy Velumani said the biggest private labs were getting more tests done which in turn was leading to the most positive results. "Private labs keep getting blamed without adequate evidence and blaming them unilaterally and banning them is stretching things too much," he said. He said there was a need to have a third party that could judge the quality of testing, and it had to be an independent agency.

There is, however, no argument to discontinue or slow down the pace of testing. "Globally it’s been cited in the medical fraternity that the most effective way to battle the pandemic is to test, test, and test," said SRL Diagnostics CEO Arindam Halder. "More people with positives is better because overall the mortality rate is low, and you can only treat what you know," he said. "Contact tracing can only be effective when testing works well,"he added.

"Both private and public sectors must work together and not as adversaries for the greater good," he said.

The Delhi administration has projected an explosion in cases in a month's time, with the number estimated to cross 500,000. Mumbai, surprisingly, has remained quiet when it came to such projections. With well over 50,000 cases, the country's most densely populated city needs to test extensively to know the extent of the spread of the pandemic.