Despite displaying symptoms of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), a nurse who worked alongside Dr Seepersaud Chatterdeo, the paediatrician who died a week ago from COVID-19, says she was told she has to wait two to three weeks for her test results.
Following the revelation on Friday that Chatterdeo died from COVID-19, Sasha Hublall-Ali took to Facebook and wrote, “I worked with the late Dr Chatterdeo as his nurse. Until recently, I worked with him at Balwant Singh Hospital. He recently passed away from COVID-19, which was confirmed too late to help him.”
She added that she shared similar symptoms to the ones Chatterdeo had, including the loss of taste and smell in addition to congestion. Hublall-Ali revealed that shortly after Chatterdeo died, she found out that he was infected with COVID-19. As a result, she placed her 7-month-old son in the care of her grandmother and quarantined herself.
The nurse then called the COVID-9 Hotline and was told to go to the Herstelling Health Centre the following day to get tested after she told them that she was experiencing signs and symptoms of the disease and that she was in contact with Chatterdeo before he died.
On August 31, Hublall-Ali along with her husband went to the Health Centre and she was tested. However, when they enquired if her husband can be tested also, they were told that only persons experiencing symptoms of the disease can be tested.
“I was told that only people with symptoms can be tested, which means that my husband, who accompanied me, was denied a test,” she said.
She called the health centre on September 2 to ask for her results since the Ministry of Health website states that tests are completed in 48 hours. However, she was told that she will probably receive her results within two or three weeks.
“Why is this taking so long? Why are the health systems so inefficient and irresponsible? When can I see my son again? By the time I find out my results, will I have to quarantine for longer? The real question is, what is the Ministry of Health doing to actually address the pandemic?” asked the clearly frustrated woman.
The Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony had recently disclosed that the Ministry has a backlog of 1,000 COVID-19 tests. He said that this number was recently reduced from 1,900 but acknowledged that 1,000 tests is still quite a large number.
According to Anthony, the backlog is the reason for the delay in persons receiving their test results.