JOIN USPadarayanapura: Mass testing put off as kiosks fail to arrive
After delays in the arrival of testing kiosks, the civic body pushed mass testing at Padarayanapura to Wednesday. The testing is intended to uncover Covid-19 cases in the ward that turned red with 36 patients after a 29-year-old Tablighi Jamaat attendee tested positive on April 7.
BBMP Commissioner B H Anil Kumar said the plan to start testing had stalled after the Palike was unable to find the testing kiosks to carry out the swab collection.
“After some difficulty, we have managed to locate two collection kiosks that will be utilised in Padarayanapura. In fact, they were dispatched there this evening,”
Dr Bilaguli said, adding that the tests will begin from Wednesday.
BBMP chief health officer Dr Vijendra Bilaguli said there are also other reasons for the delay in testing, primarily a change in the testing modality. “The ward has a population of over 35,000 people. The containment zone has a significant chunk of this population. It is impossible to test them all. The plan is to do selective testing within the ward,” he said.
A high-level meeting on Monday decided to first test those with the greatest risk to contract the disease. Consequently, on Monday, BBMP health workers, Asha workers and health department officials surveyed households inside the containment zone.
“We are trying to identify elderly individuals, pregnant women and other at-risk people for the disease and test them with the available kits. The survey report will be completed on Tuesday,” Dr Bilaguli said, adding that the idea was not to waste any kits.
He declined to mention the number of testing kits available for mass testing. The BBMP had requested at least 7,000 kits, roughly one per household in the ward’s containment zone.
Why mass testing?
The mass testing was prompted by the discovery of seven cases in the densely populated ward, located off Mysuru Road in West Bengaluru.
“The conducting of 216 random sample tests in the ward revealed seven positive cases. After this, it was decided to conduct a systematic test of residents within the ward,” Dr Hegde said. This is backed up by the health department data, which revealed the ward had one case on May 3, three on May 8, two on May 9 and one on May 10.
Residents feel stigmatised
Though it appeared that the presence of police and Garuda commandos kept people indoors at the containment zone, on-duty police said maintaining the lockdown restriction had been difficult.
“We constantly find people sitting in groups without masks on, as soon as our backs are turned,” a police constable complained, adding that the presence of armed personnel with assault rifles and lathis helped them maintain some control.
The police said the containment zone was concentrated in seven streets. Residents living outside the containment zone complained of the stigma of being associated with Padarayanapura.
Shantamma (40), a pourakarmika, was unable to collect the Rs 10,000 monthly pension of her late husband from a Vijayanagar bank since her passbook identified her as a resident of Padarayanapura. “The bank refuses to extend its services to me. I don’t live in the containment zone. Nevertheless, they have asked me to come back after May 17, but even then there is no guarantee that they will give me the pension,” she said. Her son, Manjunath, said that the family of three, including his pregnant sister, were dependent on the pension