Do I or don’t I? For over 50 patients who are suspected to be suffering from swine flu, this is the question that torments them as they await their reports from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in New Delhi.

For the last four days, the city has not received confirmation on any of the reports sent to the NICD, which is evidently struggling to clear the backlog of test reports with samples pouring in from across the country.

“The last report that we received was on August 11 for a patient admitted a day earlier. Ever since, the rush of patients has increased manifold and we have been sending over 10 samples to NICD on an average every day. There has been no response from the Delhi laboratory on the results,” says swine flu nodal officer H C Gera.

In the queue at the Delhi laboratory are 17 cases sent on Thursday, 13 on Wednesday and 15 on Tuesday, in addition to the 12 suspect cases reported on Friday.

In the absence of any local testing centre so far (with the PGI laboratory still taking time), and the centres at Delhi and National Institute of Virology, Pune, already overloaded, all that patients can do is wait.

For the relatives of the patients, these are harrowing times.

“The patients are getting anxious and their relatives are repeatedly asking us about the results. It is hard to explain to them that the testing facilities are not in our hands and that they will have to put up with the delay,” says Gera.

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