Week after civic boss gave high testing targets, numbers go down; officials say people not coming forward as it is the festive season, and they fear losing livelihood
Many residents are wary of quarantine for the whole family during a festival. Pic/Bipin Kokate
Even after specific orders from the civic chief, the city has failed to increase its volume of COVID-19 tests. On the contrary, testing reduced in the past one week. Busy with the festive season and fearful of losing their jobs, people have refused to come out to get tested, while the opposition is accusing the BMC of only issuing circulars.
Testing had improved in August owing to a large number of people from high-rises going to private labs and the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) reduced to 11.5 per cent. But after this week's decrease, the TPR had increased to 15 per cent.
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Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal had given specific targets for testing to the city's 24 wards. "We are taking help from local MLAs and corporators, but despite that, around 50 people turned up at the centre for testing on Friday. How can we achieve the targets?" a ward officer said on condition of anonymity.
Improve timings of camps
Abhishek Ghosalkar, former corporator of Dahisar told mid-day, "The timing of testing camps is 10 am and 6 pm — this is when people go to work. In the absence of the breadwinner, the rest of the family does not show interest in going for the tests." Some societies are not giving permission for testing fearing that if mass tests result in even one positive case, the whole society will get sealed.
Another official said that this has become more of a social issue than a health issue. Manish Valunj, assistant commissioner of L ward (Kurla-Chembur), said, "People have just started going to work, they can't afford to take leave if they test positive. Also, festivals like Ganeshotsav are keeping people away from testing as people fear quarantine for the whole family. But we are taking the help of corporators to raise awareness."
Get creative on ground
Prabhakar Shinde, group leader of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the BMC, said, "There are multiple issues including fear in people's minds about losing their income and being isolated. But mass testing is the need of the hour and BMC should conduct awareness campaigns on a large scale instead of just issuing circulars."
"The locations of testing centres should be changed too. People are afraid to go to COVID Care Centres for testing. The BMC can start testing centres at municipal schools. Why doesn't BMC take help from sarvajanik Ganesh mandals which are arranging health camps? People will surely come there for testing."
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