panaji even as covid19 rages and continues to spread its tentacles across the state citizens struggle to get tested with late results and lack of social distancing acting as major deterrents in porvorim a symptomatic persons couldnt get tested on saturday since the local health centre was shut no testing is taking place at government facilities except government hospitals she told toi i avoided these as there would be a crowd and turned to private labs here too most had queues and others were shut on the weekend one private hospital said they were only testing for emergencies as their staff was tiredshe finally found a private hospital in porvorim but panicked when she saw no social distancing in the queue there was no place to sit she said i got a spot to wait near medical waste bins the bins were locked but not closed i waited for a minute and then ran away from there other private labs were shut while others said their bookings for the day was full a doctor advised me to consider myself positive isolate and begin medication im keeping my fingers crossed she said advocate siddharth sardesai said that a person who goes from place to place to find testing could spread the virus which defeats the purpose of stopping covid19 a senior citizen should be able to call a hotline and get themselves tested at home either for free or at a nominal cost he saida senior citizen from caranzalem with fever wanted to get tested but found the centre closed the government is advising people to be vigilant and get themselves tested but testing is done only on alternate days there should be more testing booths testing should be 24x7 she told toithe crucial gap between testing and getting ones result is taking away lives it took my aunt three to four days to get her test results and though yes she tested late it cost her her life sardesai told toia 32yearold panaji tech worker ashish has been waiting for ten days for the results of his wifes covid test my wife got tested on april 21 and she hasnt received the results till date the government needs to streamline this and use technology to simplify the process of delivering results health officers are working hard but the government needs to step up its game a doctor told toi that since the positivity rate is very high the government must carry out rapid antigen testing 24x7 on all symptomatic patients to bring down the load on rtpcr testing which can be done based on capacity of the government and on those who are symptomatic but still test negative on rapid antigen tests he saidporvorim resident juino de souza told toi that getting tested at the porvorim primary health centre is a nightmare where hordes of people gather everyday and spill over onto the roadthe phc occupies a tiny twobedroom apartment in government quarters and needs more space to cater to