Dehradun: The Haridwar district administration has ordered a fresh probe into allegations that fake Covid reports were issued by private laboratories engaged by the Uttarakhand government to conduct tests during the Kumbh Mela.
One of the world's largest religious gatherings, the Kumbh was held in the state from April 1 to 30, and the notified Kumbh area covered various places in Haridwar, Dehradun and Tehri districts.
A committee headed by Chief Development Officer Saurabh Gaharwar has been constituted to look into the allegations and submit a report within 15 days, Haridwar District Magistrate C Ravishankar said.
It is suspected that more than one lakh such test results had been issued by the private labs, sources in the health department said. The labs apparently did so to meet the daily testing quota of 50,000 tests set by the Uttarakhand High Court during the Kumbh, the sources said.
The investigation found that a private laboratory conducted about 100,000 Rapid Antigen Tests. "Of that one lakh tests, at least 50,000 are fake. It collected the samples in the above-mentioned fraudulent way and issued fake test reports of which most were negative… It most likely did this to siphon off money from the government because for a single Rapid Antigen Test, it was to receive Rs 354 from the state government in Mahakumbh," a state health official was quoted as saying in a report.
Following this preliminary report, the Uttarakhand government ordered an investigation against all the nine private testing laboratories with which the Mela administration had signed a contract to conduct tests of those coming to attend the month-long fair. The probe was ordered after questions were raised about the low Covid positivity rate beginning April in Haridwar as compared to the rest of the state. The 10-week average test positivity rate in Haridwar was 4 per cent while the figure for the rest of Uttarakhand was 13.7 per cent.
Payment to all labs which had been assigned the responsibility of conducting tests — RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen — during the Kumbh has been withheld for the time being due to the ongoing investigation.
Overall, 400,000 tests were conducted by nine agencies and 22 private labs during the Kumbh.
The panel constituted first questioned health and Kumbh officials on Wednesday. Geharwar said the matter is being investigated and the report will be submitted in due time by July 26.
When contacted, Haridwar's Chief Medical Officer, S K Jha, said: "Kumbh area extends up to Rishikesh.
Until the probe ordered by the district administration is complete it is difficult to say at what level the alleged irregularities were committed."
The COVID-19 test scam came to light earlier this month after a man from Punjab, who had not visited Haridwar, received a COVID-19 negative report on his mobile phone from the Haridwar health department. He then lodged a complaint with the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Then, the Uttarakhand health authorities revealed that ICMR had asked the state health department to conduct a probe.
On June 10, state government spokesperson Subodh Uniyal said the probe was ordered "after the state's COVID CCO in his report to state health secretary confirmed the irregularities in about 100,000 COVID-19 tests conducted by the laboratory in question".
Stating that the laboratory in question has been "blacklisted", the official added that in the preliminary probe it was found to have issued fake test reports for at least 50,000 samples. But now more damning facts have come to light about the scam.With agency inputs