Dubai blacklists four Indian labs for Covid tests

Our Correspondent

On September 27, Air India Express announced that health authorities in Dubai will no longer accept RT-PCR Covid-19 test results from four laboratories in India.

“The RT-PCR negative Covid-19 reports from four Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-approved laboratories – Suryam Lab in Jaipur, Microhealth Labs in Kerala, Dr P Bhasin Pathlabs Ltd. in Delhi, and the Noble Diagnostic Centre in Delhi – will not be accepted anymore,” the airline said in its travel blog.

Passengers to Dubai are advised to obtain pre-travel RT-PCR reports from Pure Health-approved laboratories, it said.

On September 28, over 200 Indian passengers heading to Dubai were barred from boarding their flights because their Covid-19 test results were deemed invalid, airport authorities said. They were carrying RT-PCR reports from the blacklisted laboratories.

At Kannur International Airport in Kerala, 117 passengers were denied permission to board an Air India Express flight to Dubai, according to an airport official. At Kozhikode International Airport, some 100 passengers were held back. Only 66 adult passengers and one child were allowed to board the flight leaving at 12.30 pm. Those stranded were given free replacement tickets.
A GoAir flight to Dubai took special permission from the UAE authorities to ensure smooth operations for the day, the official said.

Neeraj Agarwal, consul for Press, Information, and Culture at the Indian Consulate in Dubai, said that passengers wishing to fly from India to Dubai can bring test report from other ICMR-approved facilities, except the four labs barred by Dubai authorities.

Kerala’s Micro Health Laboratories, one of the blacklisted labs, said the problem was created by 2,600 fake test results issued by another lab forging its letterhead and stamps.

Micro Health, which has 27 labs across the world and franchise labs in Kerala, had partnered with the UAE’s official testing facility, Pure Health, in July.

The lab has now referred the matter to the police and has also launched a QR code system to check the authenticity of the test results.