Bengaluru: Man receives 16 COVID negative report messages without taking a test

Bengaluru: Sajai M, a 39-year-old man hailing from Bengaluru received as many as 16 messages on his phone stating that he had tested negative for COVID-19, despite the fact that he had not taken the test.

He received the first message at 03:55 pm on Saturday, July 24 and things took a turn as the messages had names of different patients.

He further received 15 more messages, taking the total to 16 messages stating that he had tested negative for COVID-19. The messages showed different names, included women and were across different age groups.

Realizing that the whole thing was a technical glitch, Sajai said, “Looks like someone is misusing RT-PCR tests. This must be probed.”

Sajai did take the COVID test but that was in April – prior to a business trip – and for that, he had registered through another number. He took to Twitter and tagged BBMP to draw the civic body’s attention.

On Monday, July 27, BBMP discovered that of the 16 reports, at least one of each of the SRF IDs was generated in Mysuru and Hubballi. TOI reported that the “Two SRF IDs belonged to Bengaluru.”

Randeep D, special commissioner, Health, BBMP adding that in these two cases, the phone numbers given by swab collectors while testing was different. He added that the first digits were common and that they do not know the actual number which received these messages.

Randeep stated that a request has been made to the War Room to verify the remaining messages.

The officials asserted that the mobile numbers that end in certain sequences like 0000 are likely to get such messages and such a situation needs to be addressed and monitored by the state War Room.