Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony has suggested that the drop in the administration of COVID-19 tests is due to persons not coming forward.
“It’s just that a lot of people not coming forward to be tested,” Anthony said during his daily COVID-19 update yesterday before mentioning that a variety of tests are available in the public health care system.
Meanwhile, Anthony related that in January the Health Ministry discovered that a lot of persons were abusing the availability of PCR tests in order to access results for international travel. As such, he reminded persons that a PCR test for international travel should be done within the private sector.
“Some people who wanted to travel were coming to get PCR done by the public sector, so it was not being done for purposes of making a diagnosis, it was just done for purposes maybe of international travel and our policy has been that if you need to get a test for international travel then you should do that in the private sector,” he stated.
He went on to say that persons are not respecting the period of the time that they should wait to get tested for the virus after possible exposure. A person who may be exposed to the virus should not undergo a PCR test right away but rather wait until 4 to 5 days and then take the test.
“We’ve also noticed that if somebody feels that they were exposed, that they were presenting themselves without waiting for that window period, because from the time of exposure to the time of development of symptoms, there probably is a 4 or 5-day interval, so if they believe they were exposed and they come during the window period then obviously we’re not going to see, whether by PCR or antigen, that they are positive. So they were coming repeatedly and they were basically using up testing rather than wait the interval and then come at the appropriate time to be tested,” he added.
The Ministry of Health yesterday released its updated COVID-19 dashboard which showed 7 new cases from 354 more tests that were done
The dashboard also showed 206 persons in home isolation, 14 in institutional isolation, and 5 in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit.
No new COVID-19 death was recorded. As a result, the country’s death toll remained at 1223.
