In Mathura, a video of a doctor in a Community Health Centre (CHC) has gone viral on social media where he was seen giving about 15 swab samples from his nose and throat to a healthcare worker for meeting the daily target of testing. The district healthcare authorities have begun an investigation regarding this matter, due to the incident and the viral video.

The incident occurred at Baldeo CHC and the doctors self-confessed that the sample size to be sent to the Chief Medical Superintendent was very less in count which had to be sent. Hence, the doctor himself gave his 15 samples under fake names to show that the target had been achieved. But somebody was heard advising him that he shouldn’t give so many samples from his body.

A target of 1,500 sample tests per day have been set by the district health authorities of Mathura. Several other doctors seeking anonymity from the CHC had claimed that they are obligated to resort to unethical practices and send fake samples for meeting the daily target of testing samples if the patients don’t come. They also said that they would have been threatened with the termination of the contract if their daily testing target was unachieved.

UP has been doing an average of around 1.40 lakh tests on an everyday basis to track the COVID-19 patients. In the last 24 hours, 1,35,990 tests were done out of which 4,703 new positive cases were reported. Till now, a total of 86,76,627 samples have been tested in the state out of which 3,58,893 people are tested positive and has recorded 5,135 COVID-19 deaths.

Source: The New Indian Express