Even as the threat of outbreaks of new strains of the COVID-19 virus surface with increasing regularity, the issues of testing and being vaccinated have increasingly become matters of public controversy in parts of the region.
Late last week Republic Bank Ltd in Trinidad and Tobago took the step of announcing that come September the Bank will be implementing mandatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for the unvaccinated to determine whether or not persons in the bank’s employ are stricken with the virus.
PCR tests are administered to detect genetic material from a specific organism, such as a virus. The test detects the presence of a virus if you are infected at the time of the test. The test could also detect fragments of virus after you are no longer infected.