Nawaloka Hospitals clarifies the statement released by the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka on the hospital’s PCR Testing Facilities. Full press release as below.
We refer to the statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka, citing reliability of PCR and IgM Antibody testing of travelers to China. Nawaloka Hospitals stands by its PCR test results, released after fully authenticating each sample. The Hospital also confirms that the travelers to China who underwent PCR testing are all employees of the same company. The pre-departure PCR tests carried out on them were negative for COVID-19 virus, which the Hospital maintains.
The Hospital points out that these travelers could have been incubating the virus when they were first tested prior to their departure, a time period during which either a PCR and IgM Antibody testing test would yield a negative result.
Nawaloka Hospitals wishes to highlight that a common occurrence world-wide, is the fact that a PCR test can show up as being negative, when the virus is in an incubation period. The Hospital is emphatic that this is not an isolated incident. Identical results were shown among many foreign travelers arriving in Sri Lanka, who on arrival tested positive even though the pre-departure PCR test showed a negative result.
Nawaloka Hospitals is currently addressing this issue with the Chinese Embassy of Sri Lanka. The Hospital wishes to assure the public of the stringent, global standards they follow to ensure the accuracy of every test, conducted by them.