RT-PCR tests have been known to give erroneous results. False negatives have caused a lot of confusion and inconvenience for people.??
According to a report by Indian Express, a woman from Patiala received her husband's swab test report - that came out negative - a month after he passed away due to COVID-19.
The man, Saleem Khan, had passed away on October 31, in Mission Hospital, Ambala, after suffering from complications due to coronavirus.?
Khan's wife, Sonia, said that her husband had shown symptoms of COVID-19 in October, after which he got tested for the disease. The swabs were taken from him on October 14 and after testing 'positive', he was being treated at the Rajpura Government Hospital first and later at Mission Hospital in Ambala, where he eventually passed away.?
On December 2, Sonia received an SMS on her late husband's phone from ¡®myGOV¡¯: 'Rapid Antigen sample collected for Saleem Khan (Id:03041252464) SRFID 0304100252813 on Dec 2, 2020, 10:14 AM¡ You are advised to isolate yourself till the sample is tested and test report is available'.
The SMS said the samples were being tested at a Patiala laboratory.
After six hours of receiving that text, Sonia received another message from 'PGGOVT' which read, 'Rapid Antigen sample taken for Saleem Khan, has come Negative'.
Khan's family has reportedly taken his death certificate from Gram Panchayat, Ambala.
After talking to her relatives, Sonia discovered that the address of the patient in the SMS was mentioned as Kalo Majra Niamatpur, which turned out to be Khan's village. Kalo Majra and Niamatpur are reportedly separate and adjacent villages in Patiala, with Khan hailing from the latter; Kalo Majra's health centre caters to over a 100 villages. The Express report also said that such SMSs are being sent to many people, irrespective of whether they are sending swabs to test or not, to inflate the number of COVID tests on records.