JAIPUR: Samples taken from suspected Covid-19 cases in Alwar reached Kotputli, near Jaipur, while samples from Jaipur's Ramganj arrived in Alwar on April 12. They were meant to be tested in Jaipur.

T he mix-up happened when hospital staff and health workers who took these samples to SMS Medical College's microbiology department for testing returned to their districts with vaccine carrier boxes that were supposed to have been emptied at SMS Hospital in Jaipur.

Instead, they got mixed up - "human error", according to SMS Hospital - and the staff returned with sealed vaccine carrier boxes that were still loaded with samples, but from other collection centres. The result: Samples that were to be removed and tested at SMS Jaipur instead made their way to other district hospitals.

A fter submitting the samples at the medical college, the staff of Alwar district hospital returned from SMS Medical College with the "vaccine carrier box", but the hospital staff in Alwar were shocked when they discovered 20 samples from Covid-19 suspects, collected from Ramganj area of Jaipur city, in the carrier box.

T he Alwar health authorities then grew worried about the fate of the samples they had sent. On inquiring, they discovered that they had been found in the vaccine carrier box carried back from SMS Medical College Hospital's microbiology department to the government hospital in Kotputli. The Kotputli health worker, too, had believed the vaccine carrier box they were taking back was empty.

Full report on www.toi.in



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