Covid: SpiceHealth, AAI pass buck on ‘contamination’ of testing machines

SpiceHealth and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) are putting the onus on each other for the “contamination” of COVID-19 testing machines at the Amritsar airport that led to approximately 64 percent of the passengers on two international flights falsely testing positive on arrival in January.

SpiceHealth, which was then operating in the airport’s arrival area, had on January 6 and January 7 tested 469 passengers who arrived on two charter flights from Italian capital Rome and found 298 of them to be COVID-19-positive. This led to turmoil at the airport as passengers started protesting against the test results.