The Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine has revoked the suspension of Medall Laboratories’ RT-PCR test licence after it rectified issues, officials confirmed.
Last month, the Directorate cancelled the permission granted to the laboratory to test samples for COVID-19 citing discrepancies, including in the uploading of results on the portal of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Among the charges were the uploading of nearly 4,000 negative samples as positive.
Director of Public Health T.S. Selvavinayagam confirmed that the laboratory’s permission was restored as “issues were rectified”.
In a release, Medall Diagnostics said the inspection team visited the premises and found the testing process satisfactory. It found the cause to be a clerical error and the ICMR database was updated with the corrected data.
Medall has added a layer of supervision to avoid such errors while feeding test data into ICMR servers. Arjun Ananth, chief executive officer, Medall, said he was relieved to see the laboratory’s “testing process rigour and sanctity validated and there being nothing to prove the alleged nexus between Medall and any hospital”.
