Srinagar, June 08 (KNO): The positive cases started showing surge after more and more samples were sent to Chest Diseases hospital Srinagar for testing from various districts of Jammu and Kashmir, doctors at various district hospitals said.
They told news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), that almost every day new cases were being reported from the districts but number wasn’t that big. “But since we started to dispatch samples to CD hospital, there was an abrupt increase in positive cases which was also worrying,” a doctor said.
Sources said that not a single case was reported for many days from Baramulla district of north Kashmir as authorities in the district used to send samples to other labs. “However when they started sending samples to CD hospital, around hundred positive cases were witnessed in the district in just three days,” they said. “This raised eye-brows of all the medicos and also the patients as well.”
As per officials at CD hospital Lab around 3500 samples were tested at the Lab in the past three days, of which around 1100 to 1200 samples were tested every day.
Data available with the KNO suggests that 283 samples were tested positive at CD hospital on Sunday, however, out of 2865 samples tested at SKIMS on same day, just 58 were tested positive.
On Saturday 253 were tested positive at CD hospital however out of over 2500 samples tested at SKIMS laboratory just 50 were tested positive. On Friday, at CD hospital 135 persons were tested positive, however on the same day over 2000 samples were tested at SKIMS, of which just 38 were tested positive.
Experts opine that authorities must take cognizance of the issue seriously as it may be possible that the testing equipment may have developed fault or got infected or it may not be sanitized properly.
They said that it is true that we see bulk of positive cases at CD hospital despite that more samples are tested at SKIMS Virology Lab. Dr Syed Masood Medical Superintendent GMC Baramulla said that when they were dispatching samples to SKIMS, number of positive cases were very low, however, once started to send samples to CD hospital, number of positive cases started surging drastically.
Meanwhile, former chief minister of J&K Omar Abdullah in his tweet reacted sharply to what he said that “can’t even trust the authenticity of test results.” “As if things weren’t bad enough, we can’t even trust the ethnicity of test results.
Chest diseases hospital gives a COVID positive result, a day after, same person a negative report at SKIMS Soura. What happens to those who can’t get tested twice of from different places?”—(KNO)