COVID-19 Test rates fixed for private hospitals and laboratories in Assam

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The massive rush of people to private hospitals and laboratories for COVID tests has led the State government to fix rates. The move has been taken to prevent private hospitals from charging higher rates from the masses.

According to the rates fixed by the State Health and Family Welfare department, the maximum charge for RT-PCR test is Rs 500. It will be Rs 700 if the sample is collected from home. The rate for Rapid Antigen Test is Rs 250. All deputy commissioners have been instructed to monitor the rates and take action against private hospitals if they are found violating guidelines.

Sources in the department further said that private hospitals and laboratories have also been asked to display the rates fixed so as not to let any of them take undue advantage of the situation.

All such COVID tests are done free of cost in government hospitals.

On vaccination of employees of organizations with more than 100 employees, a source in the Directorate of Health Services said, "On request from the organizations the Health department should go to their office premises and vaccinate the employees. However, we've the problem of trained manpower. This has led us to select a few common places as vaccination centres where employees of different organizations can go. Today we did send a team to the State Zoo-cum-Botanical Garden, Guwahati where employees of Doordarshan and other organizations attended.

"We've also sent a team to the Gauhati High Court for vaccination of the nearby court employees and other organizations."

A vaccination team comprises five members, including a doctor, a nurse, and personnel from the district administration. Such a team, according to the Government of India's guidelines, can vaccinate a maximum of 120 people per day, and if it is too fast, it can inoculate ten more people. On the contrary, the rush of people to such centres is quite out of sync with the number of manpower trained for the purpose, a source in the department said.

"Now on we're going to issue 120 tokens on the first-come-first basis, and issue tokens to the rest for the next day. This will put an end to the chaos at the vaccination centres. Earlier there was the system of online registration, but now on-the-spot registration is done. The quota of vaccines given to private hospitals is based on their previous COVID vaccination records in the recent past.

"We can't engage all the nurses in the vaccination drive as we need to continue the COVID test at the same time. General patients under treatment in hospitals also need nurses," the source added.

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