Lancet Clinical Laboratories has launched an internal investigation into allegations of fraud relating to COVID-19 tests results.
This comes after a social media user accused an employee at Lancet of offering to change COVID-19 results from positive to negative for a fee.
The laboratory in a statement says, “We take any allegations of attempted fraud seriously and have launched an internal investigation into the allegations that a member of our staff offered to change test results and we will issue a public statement once investigations are over.”
“In the meantime, We would like to assure the public that our results come directly from our lab testing equipment and cannot be altered after the fact. There is no room for human error or trickery in the issuance of results once they are determined in the lab.”
Lancet Laboratory also states that a patient can test positive on one platform and negative on other platforms that might not be able to detect the mutations in Covid 19.
“In the wave of a deadly pandemic, false negative tests are far more detrimental than false positives as they may lead to infected and infectious people unknowingly spreading the virus to the vulnerable as they wrongly believe they are Covid19 negative.”
“Of the three test result slips shared on social media, one was a negative antigen test and the other two were PCR tests, one of which was negative and the other positive.”
“Lancet’s team of dedicated staff operates world-class equipment which has the technical ability to detect the new and more virulent strains of SAR-CoV2 (Covid19) that have emerged from Brazil, the UK and South Africa, which may not be detectable on other PCR platforms.”
Besides allegations of fraud in testing laboratories, there are also reports of people producing fake COVID-19 test certificates in order to travel across borders.
Zimbabwe has been named among deadly regions due to increasing number of COVID-19 positive results with countries warning citizens against trave3ling to the Southern African country.