Plea for allowing rapid and random testing for prevention of COVID-19 spread in High Court

A Public Interest Litigation has been filed in the High Court of Delhi seeking direction to the Govt in Delhi to conduct rapid & random testing of any person showing any Coronavirus symptom.

The plea moved by 3 practicing lawyers Abhay Gupta, Anupam & Prashant Arora also seeks to quash of Delhi Govt's order dated June 2, which issued new guidelines for COVID-19 testing & made the testing criteria in Delhi tighter than those issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on May 18 & restricted the access to COVID-19 testing for the public at large.

The petitioners in the Pil said that the respondent through Director General of the Health Service is allowing the testing of only symptomatic persons, & asymptomatic individuals are "restricted" from being tested.

It also mentioned that the Delhi Govt's order further restricts the testing for direct & high-risk contact.

The plea stated that "The change will only make it more difficult for asymptomatic people that have been exposed to infected people to be tested. Though earlier, family members living in the same house or doctors & health care workers exposed to a COVID-19 patient were tested even if they were asymptomatic. However, under the "impugned order" only those asymptomatic patients who are high-risk contacts (diabetic, hypertension, cancer patients, & senior citizens) of a confirmed case will be tested".

The plea copy, which likely to come for hearing on June 9 also added that the respondent should test more people, not less as the number of COVID-19 cases are rapidly increasing & the Govt is planning to remove the lockdown slowly.

It said that "Instead, the respondent has made COVID-19 testing more restrictive. This is also completely in contravention of what the experts from the national medical research body ICMR say".

The impugned order restricting the access to COVID-19 testing to the public at large is in "clear violation" of Right to Health guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of India & the same is also in clear violation of Article 14 of the Constitution of India, the plea added.

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