COVID-19: Qantas says citizens not wrongly barred from India flight

Qantas will use a different laboratory in India to test passengers for COVID-19 before flying Australians home after concerns emerged over false positive results.

A Qantas flight returns from India with Australian citizens. Picture: Supplied

Qantas will use a different laboratory in India to test passengers for COVID-19 before flying Australians home after concerns emerged over whether false positive results were being produced and unfairly blocking the return of vulnerable citizens.

However, the airline is standing by the initial testing for the first repatriation flight, since the travel ban was lifted, which saw around half of the 150 Australians scheduled to come home being left behind after returning a positive result or being the close contact of an active case.

The airline said on Tuesday it had reviewed its pre-departure testing arrangements following an ABC report which claimed at least five of the 46 Australians blocked from boarding the flight had undertaken secondary testing showing negative results.

But Qantas said retesting all of the original swabs from the 46 passengers — a process subject to independent medical supervision — verified the original positive results

Qantas Group chief medical officer Ian Hosegood said “a false positive COVID result tends to be far less common than a false negative.”

But University of NSW epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws said the World Health Organisation’s “best practice” for retesting involved collecting fresh swabs rather than simply retesting the original swabs.

“A swab could be contaminated for many reasons,” she told The Australian.

Professor McLaws also said given the “high stakes” of the outcome, Australia should import Therapeutic Goods Administration-approved rapid antigen tests to confirm results.

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said the Morrison government “refused to take responsibility” and was leaving the testing regime in the hands of Qantas.

The Australian also understands Qantas did not seek advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs before contracting the laboratory which conducted the initial passenger tests. Sources close to the process said DFAT would have recommended using another firm.

The testing laboratory CRL, which was used by Qantas, temporarily lost its accreditation in April with India’s National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories.

However, this accreditation is not mandatory and the company is still registered with the Indian Council of Medical Research – a national medical research body. The laboratory was subcontracted by the diagnostic agency used by Qantas for pre-flight screening.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is working with Qantas to prioritise the barred passengers for future repatriation flights once their mandatory two-weeks of isolation is completed.

The next government-run repatriation flights from India to Darwin’s Howard Springs facility are scheduled for Sunday and May 30.

Last month, the federal government announced every Australian flying from India to the Northern Territory would be required to return a negative COVID-19 PCR test and a negative antigen test before boarding flights home.

One passenger who returned at the weekend on the repatriation flight tested positive for COVID-19 after arriving at Howard Springs despite having passed two negative tests – a PCR and a rapid antigen test — before flying.

Qantas said the passenger’s positive test suggested the person contracted the virus prior to leaving India but had not yet developed the infection when undergoing pre-flight testing.

“Considering all of these data points, Qantas and DFAT do not believe that any passengers booked on this flight were denied boarding in error,” the airline said.

Qantas said a different laboratory would be used for future pre-flight COVID-19 testing, to ensure there was utmost confidence in all aspects in the repatriation screening program but said none of these factors “impacted the ultimate accuracy of the tests.”