Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Even as over one and a half years have passed after the first Covid outbreak in the city and people have been learning to live with the deadly disease, the health department has not been able to pull down the number of insufficient samples. The number of samples insufficient for the process (SIP) is more than 13 times the number of patients who tested positive in the past 10 days. As many as 20 patients have tested positive in the past 10 days while the number of samples found insufficient for the process is over 263.
“Samples insufficient for process are those samples which are not collected properly or not in sufficient in amount so that they can be tested,” officials of MGM Medical College said, adding, “Teams of the health department have been collecting Covid samples for more than a year, but still, such a large number of insufficient samples getting collected is surprising.”
The number of positive samples on September 17 was 0, but 65 samples were found insufficient for the process. Similarly, over one and two samples were tested positive on September 16 and 15, but 55 and 40 samples were found insufficient.
Sources said that the health department does not contact the patient whose sample is found insufficient again and it might prove dangerous if some of them are positive.
As many as 153,101 patients have been found Covid-positive till date and over 2.53 samples have been tested. The city has reported 1,391 deaths due to Covid.
‘Cough, sneeze affect sample’
‘The number of insufficient samples has increased in the past few days. The major reason behind this is that many people don’t want to give samples willingly as Covid cases have dropped and coughing or sneezing during sample collection affects the quality of the sample. It’s not a matter of concern as it’s a sampling error, but we’ll alert the teams to again take samples properly’
— Dr Amit Malakar, district nodal officer for Covid-19