ADK Explains the False Negatives

ADK has responded to the reports of false negatives for PCR tests that had been performed at a lab under their management at the Maafaru International Airport.

ADK released a statement in response to the report published in Dhiyares, The Maldives Journal’s sister-newspaper. Dhiyares had published a report that highlighted that the PCR lab at Maafaru International Airport had released hundreds of false negatives which had directly caused massive financial damage to several resorts that had relied on the lab’s services. ADK’s management had refused to provide any comment to Dhiyares during their investigation up until the publication of the report.

According to the statement, the PCR lab had been set up through a joint venture agreement between ADK Hospital and Hillside Pvt Ltd. The statement claimed that the agreement would only be valid for 6 months.

However, this contradicts the Health Protection Agency’s (HPA) statement that the lab had been closed because of a change in management, and that the HPA’s inspection team had found issues with the lab that required addressing.

ADK claimed that their tests had been approved by the relevant authorities, and that all the controls required for testing had been maintained, and that samples had been sent to other labs randomly as a quality-control measure.

While ADK did not deny that false negatives did not occur, they claimed that the false negatives may have come about through the sample-collection process.

They claimed that sometimes the samples may not have been properly collected, and that the samples may not have been stored at the right temperature while being transported, and that it may have taken too long before the samples reached the lab.

An expert speaking to Dhiyares on the condition of anonymity had said that one cause for the false negatives may have been the ADK’s use of manual virus extraction during the process of analysing the samples.

Also, a resort manager who had dealt with the Maafaru Airport lab told Dhiyares that samples that had tested negative at Maafaru had tested positive at IGMH.