After two-and-a half months, the Navi Mumbai municipal commissioner had suspended a doctor, who was in-charge of antigen testing. They suspended him after receiving several complaints of fake COVID-19 reports being published on the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) website. The investigation team has already submitted its report.

The NMMC had formed an investigation team to investigate the accusations of a scam that involved COVID-19 testing centres in which it was alleged that relatives of negative patients were listed as tested negative on the ICMR website even though they had not undertaken the test. It was suspected that a minimum 10,000 such fake reports from Navi Mumbai were being published on the website. The report was submitted to the NMMC chief, Abhijit Bangar on Friday and will be officially published in a few days.

As per the sources, the committee was formed to probe into the allegations and had also set up a call centre where the officials had also called the patients whose names were citedon the website to confirm whether they had actually done the tests. The source said that approximately 1.51 lakh people were called to verify if their entries were made after doing the test.

It was discovered that around 7-8 thousand entries were duplicate which means that their names were published without them undergoing the tests. It has been found that it was the gap in the data entry system in which the staffers would carelessly add the names of negative patients’ relatives without testing.

The matter came to light after Ankush Kadam, who is the core committee member of Maratha Kranti Morcha had complained to the authorities about this scam. It was claimed that in one of the cases the negative report of a person who had passed away 10 years ago was published on the website.

Source: ET Healthworld