U-19 COVID-19 test under the scanner

|| Desk Report ||

The authenticity of  Bangladesh Cricket Board’s coronavirus testing of youth cricketers was put into question yet again after Iftekhar Hossain, who had tested positive for the virus on Wednesday and was found to be COVID- 19 negative just 48 hours later.

Iftekhar, a batting all-rounder from Barishal, was tested positive when the second batch’s result came out on Wednesday and he was kept in a specialised isolation camp for cricketers at the BCB Academy ground as well.

The tests were carried out by the Directorate General of Health Services, informed BCB’s chief physician Debashis Chowdhury, and the board will now test Iftekhar at another institute.

'Our contract was with DGHS. Now we will test him for the third time, maybe from some other reliable source so that we can realise what his actual state is. But we are treating him as positive, he will be still in isolation,’ Debashis told a leading English daily. 

'The players' samples were tested by the government authorised RT-PCR kit, which was prone to giving out the wrong results at times,' said ASM Alamgir, principal scientific officer at the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control And Research.

‘There are human engagements in various steps of this test. Sample collection, sample transportation, sample preservation and many other things. So, considering human error, in 25-30 percent cases, results may differ. Therefore, false-negative results might come but false positive is not possible,’ Alamgir told New Age.

He admitted that BCB knew about these factors beforehand but had no other option at their disposal.