By the time Prashant Suna, 42, called the doctor seeking medical advice, he had recovered from most of the symptoms of Covid-19. It had bee...
By the time Prashant Suna, 42, called the doctor seeking medical advice, he had recovered from most of the symptoms of Covid-19. It had been twelve days since he had fever and cough, and ten days since he took an RT-PCR test. “But I got the reports only today,” he told me. “It says Covid positive”.
This was in April 2021, when India was in the grip of a deadly second wave of Covid-19. Cases were rising rapidly in Odisha. But the state had only 13 laboratories to conduct RT-PCRs, the molecular tests considered the gold standard for Covid detection. Of these, 9 labs were in the state capital Bhubaneswar. (The number has gone up to 20 centres now, out of which 11 are in the capital.)
As a result, the residents of most Adivasi-dominated districts like Nuapada, Nabarangpur, Mayurbhanj, Deogarh, and Kalahandi where Suna lived, had to wait at least 7-10 days for test results after their samples were sent to a lab, usually miles away.
While he waited for the results, Suna did not even have the option to fully isolate. His family lived in a one room house. “My father and younger brother are feverish now, and my three children have caught...
