Qantas is standing by the COVID-19 testing process which saw 70 people bumped from last week’s repatriation flight from India to Australia, saying it has re-run the tests and obtained the same results.
Key points:
- Twelve passengers who tested positive ran their own tests, and returned negative results
- Qantas says the initial results were correct, but will no longer use the same laboratory for COVID testing in the future
- The passengers who tested positive will have to wait 14 days before they are allowed to fly to Australia
Forty-six of those people tested positive for COVID-19, while 26 others were kept off the flight because they were close contacts.
There have been mounting questions about the testing process, with many of the passengers complaining they were unfairly blocked from returning to Australia.
The laboratory which did the tests was suspended by a national accreditation agency last month, while 12 of those who tested positive have since done their own tests, which have all come back negative.
But Qantas says it has re-run the original tests within the same laboratory under additional supervision, and they have come back positive once again.
“All of the positive test results were re-run over the weekend under additional medical supervision, and the outcome was the same,” the airline said in a statement.
Many of the passengers bumped from the flight said they had not experienced any symptoms and more than 20 of them recorded very similar results, showing “weak positives” with low levels of virus in their systems.
Experts told the ABC those two factors raised red flags about the accuracy of the tests.
But the airline said some passengers may have got contradictory results simply because other testing centres did not pick up the low levels of COVID-19 in their systems.
“The tests … included some weak positives that may have been interpreted as negative results by other laboratories,” it said.
India’s total coronavirus cases surged past the 25 million mark on Tuesday, boosted by 263,533 new infections over the previous 24 hours, while deaths from COVID-19 rose by a record 4,329.
India is now the world’s second nation to pass the grim milestone, after the United States.
The country’s total case load is now at 25.2 million, while the death toll is at 278,719, according to Health Ministry data.
The ABC revealed on the weekend that the laboratory which did the testing for Qantas, CRL, had its accreditation suspended by India’s National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL).
The airline said it would instruct the company employed to manage the testing regime not to use CRL from now on as it wanted to ensure there was “utmost confidence” in the testing process.
It maintained that CRL’s suspension did not relate directly to its COVID-19 testing, although Indian government documentation makes it clear the NABL does play a key role in regulating COVID-19 tests.
Qantas chief medical officer Dr Ian Hosegood said the airline remained confident no-one was unfairly blocked from the flight.
“When it comes to testing, having rigorous sample collection and identity verification processes in place is something we’ve taken very seriously,” he said.
“While no large scale testing program is flawless and mistakes can occur, a false positive COVID result tends to be far less common than a false negative.
“Weak positive results usually mean someone is either in the very early stages of COVID or could reflect a prior infection they may not even know they had.”
The airline said all those passengers who tested positive would have to wait 14 days from their positive test before being eligible to fly to Australia.
But it reiterated that the federal government would prioritise them for future flights.
“We understand the tremendous stress people relying on these flights are under and that is why Qantas is working with the Australian government to help bring them home,” Dr Hosegood said.
“But we have to do that in a way that keeps everyone safe and avoids overwhelming quarantine facilities with a high proportion of positive passengers.”
Reuters: Adnan Abidi
)However, some experts and industry leaders are continuing to question the testing process put in place, and say they are still unconvinced the initial results are legitimate.
“Good quality PCR testing technology has built-in quality checks that minimise false results,” Pathology Technology Australia chief executive Dean Whiting told the ABC.
“The most likely causes of multiple low viral load results are; poor sample collection, sample contamination and poor lab practices.”
He also said that Qantas should have re-tested the initial results at a completely different laboratory.
“In all cases, the best way forward is to recollect the sample and test again,” he said.
“If poor lab practice is suspected, re-collect the sample and test in a different lab.”
ABC/Reuters
