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Amritsar Airport: 70 percent of the passengers on a flight tested positive
Photo: Hindustan Times / IMAGO
After a long-haul flight from Italy to India last Wednesday, 125 of 179 passengers, around 70 percent, tested positive for the corona virus - although they had to show a negative test before the flight.
The positive results at the airport in the metropolis of Amritsar can apparently be explained by faulty tests, as the Indian media are now reporting.
For the majority of the passengers who tested positive, new tests have now turned out negative, reports "The New Indian Express".
The report does not give exact figures.
According to the authorities on Sunday, "some" retests were negative.
The authorities have now announced an investigation into the possibly faulty work of the responsible laboratory.
The laboratory under the supervision of the airport had only started work in mid-December.
After the allegedly false tests of the past few days, another laboratory has now been commissioned with the corona tests, it is said.
Technical breakdown?
A health department employee has a suspicion about the many positive tests.
"There could be a technical breakdown in the equipment, or a chemical that the laboratory used could be the problem," the Hindustan Times quoted him as saying.
An investigation report on the laboratory's test mechanism had been requested.
Also on Thursday there were an unusually large number of positive tests at the airport in Amritsar after a flight from Italy to India.
More than 170 passengers on a flight from Rome, more than 60 percent, had tested positive.
On Saturday, when the responsible laboratory was replaced, after a flight from Birmingham in England to Amritsar, according to the Hindustan Times, the corona tests in 25 of 192 passengers, i.e. only 13 percent, were positive.
After the violent and fatal corona wave almost a year ago, the number of infections in India was low for months.
They have been rising sharply for some time now.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 35 million people have been infected with the coronavirus in India, with around 482,000 deaths from the virus officially recorded.
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