Meghalaya: 72-year-old man tested positive for COVID-19 turns out to be false

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaJune 16, 2020

The 72-year-old person, who was admitted at the Dr H Gordon Robert Hospital recently with acute respiratory infection, has turned out to be a ‘false’ positive case of COVID-19.

“We have found that the case in Dr H Gordon Robert hopsital is a false positive case. Therefore, the number of positive cases in the state stands at 44 of which 14 are active cases,” Director of Health Services (MI) Dr Aman War told reporters on Tuesday.

The elderly person with no travel history from Umsamlem village was declared tested positive for COVID-19 after he was admitted in the hospital with severe acute respiratory infection, on June 9.

Dr War said contact tracing both in his area of stay and adjoining areas was done and rapid diagnostic test and RT-PCR tests were also conducted on all high risk and low risk contacts and all of them were found to be negative.

“Based on this, we had very detailed discussion with the treating doctors from the hospital and also from the government on the matter. Since the elderly patient was recovering very fast where today he was already walking and doing very well, we decided to test him again although he has not completed 14 days period as we were highly suspicious that how is it possible that this positive case will come out as a freak case as none of the people he had contacts with had turned out to be positive. On the 7th day (which is on Sunday), we took the first sample for RT-PCR it came out negative and on conducting the rapid test, there was no anti-bodies found. We again took the 24 hours sample and report came out today negative and again did the rapid test, we found there are no anti-bodies,” he said.

The DHS said the meeting of the Response Team for Management of COVID-19 in the state held today has concluded that the case in the Robert hospital is a false positive case.