For our Laval location (open Monday - Saturday):

For our downtown Montreal location (open Monday - Saturday):

All samples are processed at the same time, so it does not matter at what time your appointment is at (e.g. a sample collected at 9:00 a.m. will receive the results at the same time as a sample collected at 10:00 a.m., as all samples for each time range above will be processed at the same time).

If you cannot find your results by 6:00 p.m,  please email us at info@liliumdiagnostics.com so we can help you to retrieve your results. We monitor our emails until 9:00 p.m. daily.

For Oropharyngeal and Saliva tests:

For Nasopharyngeal tests:

Otherwise your test may fail due to a low sample quality, requiring a re-test (each of our tests includes an internal control to test the sample quality, to be sure the sample is of adequate quality).

We do not provide travel certificates, although our test and report can be used for medical purposes. Our test is intended to diagnose whether or not you are infected by SARS-CoV-2. This may be important for medical reasons since a SARS-CoV-2 infection can become significantly worse in the low atmospheric pressure inside an airplane and from the stress of flying. An infection that may otherwise not have developed into significant symptoms could instead develop into serious Covid symptoms or a higher risk of longer term health consequences by flying while infected.

The benefits of the Lilium Covid RT-PCR test is that it is often able to detect a SARS-CoV-2 infection before symptoms (i.e. before a patient is aware that they may even be infected), and the results are ready the same day within hours. This rapid and highly sensitive diagnostic test helps to alleviate medical risks such as flying for some patients.

We are able to provide clinical consultations and a prescription for the test at each of our clinics. As for all our tests, you will receive a copy of the laboratory report with the test results. Please note that Lilium is an accredited medical laboratory, and we require a prescription for all tests.

Vaccination has no effect on the Lilium RT-PCR tests.

Unlike many other PCR tests, the Lilium PCR test does not give a false positive for several weeks after you were infected with SARS-CoV-2 and have already cleared it from your body. The exact length of time varies from person to person. On average, around 50% of our customers test negative after 10 days, up to 90% after 14 days, and around 99% in 20 days, on the oropharyngeal test. The nasopharyngeal test takes about 1 week longer to show a negative.

You should book a nasopharyngeal test.

The nasopharyngeal RT-PCR test has the advantage that it can, in most cases, detect the virus that was present in the past week or more (it can detect viral remnants and, if still present, any remaining live virus). This is because SARS-CoV-2 RNA can be detected for a longer period of time in the nasal cavity (after the virus has already been neutralized) because viral remnants are not cleared from the nasal cavity as quickly as from the oral cavity (in the oral cavity, enzymes and high cellular turnover result in faster clearance of dead cells and viral remnants).

Technically an oropharyngeal test may be more accurate than a nasopharyngeal test as it often detects a positive result earlier and a negative result earlier, especially for the Omicron strain. This means that an oropharyngeal test may be used as an indirect estimate for viral contagiousness (however, please note it still takes a few days after being infected with SARS-CoV-2 before it can be detected by any test). For many individuals (especially fully vaccinated and younger individuals) it can often be surprising by how rapidly the virus can be neutralized by the immune system once symptoms start (even if symptoms continue several days afterwards once they have started); an oropharyngeal test has the ability to detect this and more accurately show a true negative. It can be equally surprising for individuals with poor immune responses to the virus to find out they are still positive on the oropharyngeal test more than 10 days later, meaning they are probably still contagious. It is not possible to estimate this real-time viral status with a nasopharyngeal test as it can with the oropharyngeal test. The nasopharyngeal test is better for determining if you were recently infected with SARS-CoV-2 (it just cannot be used as an indirect estimate for determining if the virus may still be replicating or not, like the oropharyngeal test can).

Please note that many antigen tests do not show a positive until after the immune system has begun to attack the virus. Most antigen tests detect the nucleoprotein of the virus. Nucleoproteins become more readily accessible to the antibodies in the antigen test after the virus has been torn apart by the immune system, increasing the surface area of detectable nucleoproteins. Since the immune response to the virus in vaccinated individuals can be rapid, in many cases the virus has been largely neutralized by the time the antigen test shows the first positive signal. This positive signal may continue for over a week in nasal samples after the virus has already been completely neutralized, since the dead viral fragments can remain in the nasal cavity for a long time before being completely eliminated. Please also note that some antigen tests cannot distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses like the common cold. Antigen tests have a low accuracy, resulting in both false positives and false negatives. This is why a positive antigen test should always be confirmed by a PCR test within 24 hours.

Please note that if you perform an antigen test at home, or another swab test, you may adversely affect the results of a nasopharyngeal PCR test. This is because the swab used to collect the sample will also collect the RNA needed for the PCR test, reducing the total available amount of RNA for the PCR test. Although a PCR test is much more sensitive than an antigen test, there is much less viral RNA remnants present at the end of an infection than the amount of viral protein residue.

An antigen test is a quick but inaccurate test that gives many false positive and negative results. This means that it can give a positive result when you are actually negative, or a negative result when you are actually positive. Many experts estimate that it is only about 50% accurate, and with the Omicron variant possibly even less than 30% accurate.

RT-PCR tests are the gold standard in testing. They are more accurate than standard PCR tests and tests that are generally categorized as NAAT or molecular tests. An RT-PCR test is a PCR, NAAT, moecular and swab test (so a RT-PCR test will fulfill any of these requirements), but a PCR, NAAT, molecular or swab test is not necessarily a RT-PCR test. You should thus specifically choose a RT-PCR test if this is required or if you are not sure what the requirement is, since a RT-PCR test fulfills all requirements and is accepted everywhere. PCR tests can also be performed on oral samples, while all antigen tests require a nasal and nasopharyngeal sample.

Many people wonder why antigenic tests are still performed by testing centers, since their accuracy is so low. The main reason is because most testing centers are not full fledged laboratories and have limited PCR testing capacity or the PCR testing takes too long to perform. At Lilium, we have a fully automated laboratory that is able to process PCR tests quickly and at a large scale. By coming directly to Lilium, patients benefit from wholesale pricing and a guarantee that the result are ready the same day.