People reluctant to get tested, experts worried

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 30

It was in March, when the Covid-19 pandemic had hit the state, and now, seven months have gone by, but officials in the health, police and district administration are facing similar challenges. One of the major challenges for the officials is to convince people to get tested for Covid.

ACP Bimal Kant, district nodal Covid care officer for cops, had recently said that being a nodal officer, he had noticed that people did not come forward and thus they suffered and in some cases unfortunate deaths happened.

“We lost our ASI to Covid on Saturday, I would like to urge everyone that whenever someone feels that something is not right, they must get themselves tested and should not wait, because I have seen that if diagnosed at an early stage, the patient can be cured, otherwise it becomes very difficult for doctors to deal with the situation,” he said.

Senior Medical Officer Dr AS Duggal said that he was shocked to see that even after several months, the thinking of people had not changed towards Covid and to convince a patient, who suffers from the symptoms has become a painstaking task.

“Be it anyone, educated or uneducated, everyone has similar response to the fact that they must get themselves tested,” the doctor said adding that for the past few days he had been encouraging a patient suffering from fever to get him tested but he wasn’t agreeing.

The Senior Medical Officer shared that patients with symptoms normally did not visit the doctors these days, and if they do, they prefer only medicine and not any advise on Covid test.

Dr Duggal said that if not treated on time, Covid can be fatal and he has seen people who have died of the disease.