Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Karen Gordon-Boyle yesterday said that rapid tests could be useful for screening purposes for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) but maintained that Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing remains the standard for confirmation of cases.
According to Gordon-Boyle, the testing being done in Guyana for the virus can pick up a positive case between 24 to 48 hours before someone becomes symptomatic. She said that even though you may have persons who don’t show symptoms of the virus testing positive, the ministry would not be able to go out and test everyone. “But then you may have a lot more people, if you just go testing people that will be negative and remain negative. So it’s not the kind of test, because of its expense, that we’re going to get to do tests on everyone,” she explained to Stabroek News during an interview.