Coronavirus: Pregnant woman’s samples declared negative after retest

The 30-year-old pregnant woman designated as P652 — due to deliver at a private nursing home on Friday — has tested negative for coronavirus after having been declared as a positive case.

The National Institute of Virology’s Bengaluru Field Unit that retested her samples declared her COVID-19 negative on Thursday evening, after Dr Lal Path Labs in Delhi had earlier tested her samples and declared her a positive patient.

Interpreting the result on her samples, Dr Lal Path Labs said in their report: “Inconclusive. This could be due to low viral load in the sample. A repeat sample is recommended for confirmation.”

The woman is a second-time mother and her one-and-a-half-year-old child had tested negative for coronavirus along with her family.

Health commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey justified shifting the woman to the Victoria Hospital COVID-19 ward, putting the unborn baby in danger, saying that Dr Lal Path Labs had declared the result positive despite being inconclusive.

The woman was due for an elective C-section on Friday at Jayanagar’s Cloudnine Hospital, the reason why the private clinic decided to test her for COVID-19.

She was at Cloudnine on May 2 for more than an hour for a routine consultation and was in touch with seven of its staff, including doctors, all of whom later tested negative. Her sample was taken on the same day.

On May 4, the woman’s samples sent to Dr Lal Path Labs in Delhi had returned positive, though the lab had claimed in its ‘interpretation’ that the results were also ‘inconclusive’.

On May 6, her sample was sent to the Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute’s Virus Research and Diagnostic Laboratory and was declared negative. The woman was immediately shifted out of Victoria Hospital, after having spent a night with other COVID-19 patients and using common facilities like washrooms.

Since the two tests were contradictory, the sample was once again tested at the National Institute of Virology’s Bengaluru Field Unit. It put all anxieties to rest by declaring the woman COVID-19 negative.

Director of Lal Path Labs Dr Vandana Lal said they were not involved in swab collection, adding that Cloudnine had collected, labelled and handed over the woman’s sample to them.

“We tested the sample twice and found it to be positive,” Dr Vandana said. “We have put it up for a third run with another kit, which is showing a positive trend. We have been asked to send the sample back, which we are doing.”

Asserting that the lab is sure of its results, she said: “We have also sent five positive and five negative samples for a blinded study to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) where all our results matched and they have given us a report assuring our quality.”

What Cloudnine says

Cloudnine Hospital, for its part, said a trained lab technician took the swab and they followed the protocol to the T. In a statement, Cloudnine said: “As per ICMR guidelines, it clearly states asymptomatic pregnant women should be tested in the health facilities where they were expected to deliver and all arrangements should be made to collect and transfer samples to testing facilities. This patient in question here was due in the next five days and we followed all the protocols by getting the test through a national accredited lab.”