An interim application has been filed before the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Central government to ensure that the extremely high amount taken for conducting Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test to check for Covid-19 infections by private hospitals and labs is refunded to patients.
According to the interim plea, the over-charged amount should be refunded to the affected people, considering that in India there are crores of people who are living Below the Poverty Line and the GDP has gone down to minus 23.9 percent during the period of lockdown. The excess money taken from people, therefore, is nothing but extortion and the persons responsible should be punished and excess amount should be refunded.
The interim plea has been filed by Advocate Ajay Agrawal in a pending public interest petition filed by him seeking fixed rate of Rs 400 for these tests across India. A three-Judge Bench of Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde and Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian, had in this petition issued notice to the Union Health Ministry seeking its reply within two weeks, and had decided to hear it with another pending petition regarding the cost of Covid-19 treatment.
According to the plea, private testing labs and hospitals are using the current pandemic as opportunities for making money. With the machines required for RT-PCR tests already there, the labs do not incur any other cost to conduct these tests. As the citizens of the country are worried about the Covid-19 virus, they are forced to get the tests done at a very high price. The exorbitant amount charged from poor and innocent people of this country therefore needs to be refunded immediately as it is not only unrealistic and unreasonable but shocking.