Salon owner in Bengaluru dies while awaiting Covid-19 test result

A 45-year-old salon owner with pneumonia, who waited in vain for over four days for his Covid-19 test to arrive, died on Tuesday night. The report finally arrived on Wednesday morning, some 10 hours after death, showing that he was infected with the virus.

The man's family now say the test result’s inability to come in time meant that their relative was deprived of the chance to get the critically important care that he needed to likely save his life.

The patient had originally been referred from ESI Rajajinagar to KC General hospital on Saturday and allegedly spent four days in a state of neglect because healthcare services were prioritised towards confirmed Covid-19 patients.

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“For 96 hours, the patient lay in an open bed, without any special consideration made to the fact that he had pneumonia. He was not given a single pill or injection in two days because he was not officially a Covid-19 patient,” B Narayanaswamy, a leader from the Savita Samaj said.

However, Dr B R Venkateshaiah, Medical Superintendent of KC General hospital denied this claim. “We paid attention to his every need. There was no such laxity of care,” he said, confirming, however, that the test results had been delayed.

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Test loads

“A swab sample had been collected from the patient on Saturday while he was admitted at ESI Rajajinagar. The samples had been sent to the testing lab at GKVK, which was handling the brunt of new test loads as the labs at Nimhans and BMCRI had been closed,” he added.

The BMCRI lab has since opened on Sunday, a senior staffer at the lab confirmed.

Several officials have said the closure of these two labs had drastically downsized the scale of testing.

“The patient’s testing sample took time to move up through the backlog of samples,” Dr Venkateshaiah said.

Of 360 beds in KC General hospital, 265 are reserved for non-Covid patients and 95 for Covid-19 patients, out of which six are ICU beds.

“All of our ICU beds and Covid-19 beds are occupied. 250 non-Covid patients occupy the remaining beds,” Dr Venkateshaiah added.

At least three other Covid-positive individuals were said to have died in the city on Wednesday, after being deprived of care by several hospitals.