Private Lab In Kerala Found To Be Issuing Fake COVID-19 Negative Certificates To People

In a major development, a private laboratory based in Kerala's Valanchery has allegedly been conducting a large-scale fraud by issuing false COVID-19 negative certificates to people, reports The Times of India.

It has been alleged that the Arma Laboratory, a franchise of a laboratory-based out of Kozhikode, has fraudulently amassed more than Rs 45 lakh through the scam.

The Kerala Police's investigations so far have revealed that it collected swab samples from as many as 2,500 people, while only 496 of those samples were sent to the parent laboratory in Kozhikode. The rest of the people whose samples were not sent to the parent laboratory were instead issued fake COVID-19 negative certificates.

This gains significance as Kerala has emerged as one of the worst affected states in the country. As per the state government’s dashboard, it has so far discovered a total of 1,87,276 positive cases, of which as many as 61,791 remain active cases. The state has also recorded 791 casualties to the pandemic so far.

It should be noted that Kerala's test positivity rate also remains higher than the national average, and stood at 12.59 per cent as of bygone Monday (28 September).