By Rathindra Kuruwita 

A health sector decision maker had told a major Middle Eastern airline that the government laboratories did not conduct rapid PCR tests and those tests needed to be conducted at private labs, College of Medical Laboratory Science (CMLS) President, Ravi Kumudesh told The Island yesterday.

Last week, UAE announced that fully-vaccinated residence visa holders from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Nigeria and Uganda could return to the country. However, officials there said that it needed passengers to have a rapid PCR test four hours prior to departure.

The Indian airports had set up government controlled rapid PCR facilities at the airports, but the Sri Lankan health bigwigs had outsource testing to private labs that they had links to, Kumudesh This racket deprived the government of revenue and the company tasked with testing had already been blacklisted by China, he alleged.

“The major difference between the standard lab-based RT-PCR test and the Rapid RT-PCR test is the turnaround time. If you get the Rapid RT-PCR test done, you’ll be able to get the results on-site within 30 minutes whereas it’ll take up to 72 hours to get the results of a standard RT-PCR test. We also don’t need to set up facilities that costs significant funds when we do rapid PCR tests. 16 Sri Lankan hospitals already do rapid PCRs. They include the Embilipitiya Hospital, which is in health minister’s electoral district,” he said.

The lab technologists’ union leader said that all 16 machines had been received by the country as donations and the Health Ministry officials had continuously undermined President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had instructed the ministry to buy 30 rapid PCR machines. The CMLS President said that the President had issued the order after they had written to him on eight separate occasions.

“However, the Health Ministry officials reduced this number by half and although the tenders were called in June, nothing came of it. We wrote to philanthropists and they responded. For example, the rapid PCR machine at the Embilipitiya Hospital was donated by Ven. Omalpe Sobitha Thera, the machine at Lady Ridgeway Hospital was donated by Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardane,” he said.