Government regulations designed to streamline testing for the novel coronavirus could be ending up delaying them, frustrating doctors on the frontline of efforts to prevent the outbreak from overwhelming India’s healthcare system.
If a patient shows symptoms of covid-19, a doctor can’t just order a test immediately. Protocol requires doctors to fill out and submit a form for approval to the Union health ministry’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP).
It can take anywhere between an hour and a day for the approval to come through, which allows the doctor to send the sample to a designated lab.
IDSP, which is part of the National Centre for Disease Control, can—and in some cases does—reject the application. Both government and