RT-PCR Negative report alone not ground to deny COVID compensation: Bombay HC

The Bombay High Court has ruled that an RT-PCR report showing a person as COVID-19 negative cannot be the sole basis for rejecting compensation claims when other medical evidence clearly establishes coronavirus infection and death due to it.

In an order passed on January 9 , the Aurangabad bench of Justices Arun Pednekar and Vaishali Jadhav directed the Ahilyanagar district collector to process the compensation claim of Machindra Gaikwad , whose wife, a nurse, died while on COVID-19 duty during the pandemic.

The court set aside the collector’s earlier decision rejecting the claim solely on the ground that no RT-PCR report confirming COVID-19 positivity of the deceased had been submitted. The bench held that such an approach was untenable when overwhelming medical material pointed to COVID-19 infection as the cause of death.

The judges observed that an RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) test is a standard laboratory method used to detect the genetic material of the coronavirus, but medical science recognises that the test can yield false-negative results due to factors such as the timing of testing, low viral load, or sampling errors. Therefore, the court said, an RT-PCR report cannot be treated as the only decisive factor when other clinical and diagnostic evidence clearly establishes COVID-19 infection.

In the present case, the bench noted that medical documents including CT scan findings, oxygen saturation records, treatment papers and the certificate of cause of death clearly indicated that the deceased was suffering from COVID-19 infection and died due to its complications. “Merely because the petitioner could not submit a report certifying that the deceased tested positive for COVID-19, his compensation claim cannot be rejected,” the court said.

The High Court directed the Ahilyanagar collector to forward Gaikwad’s claim to the competent authority by holding that his wife was COVID-19 positive at the time of death, in view of the overwhelming medical evidence.

Gaikwad has sought Rs 50 lakh compensation under the Prime Minister’s Garib Kalyan Yojana , a scheme announced for the families of COVID-19 warriors, including doctors and health workers who lost their lives while performing duties during the pandemic.

According to the petition, Gaikwad’s wife had been working as a nurse at the Ahilyanagar Civil Hospital since 1993 and died in May 2021 while performing her duties during the peak of the second wave. She was posted at a quarantine centre and was in direct contact with COVID-19 patients.

Medical records submitted before the court showed that she died due to cardio-respiratory failure as a consequence of pneumonitis and coronavirus infection .

The ruling is expected to have wider implications for similar COVID-related compensation claims that were rejected solely due to the absence of a positive RT-PCR report during the pandemic.