March 31, 2020

In T&T: Only Persons With a Travel History And Their Primary Contacts Are Being Tested.

By Newsroom

Persons with a travel history and their primary contacts will be given priority for getting tested for COVID-19. Indeed the Ministry of Health does not guide the testing policies of the Caribbean Pubic Health Agency (Carpha) and persons will have to be showing symptoms before they are tested. That’s the word from Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh  at Tuesday’s Coronavirus Update news conference hosted by the government. “We cannot test an asymptomatic person because they do not have the “viral load” and would not yield the correct result,” Deyalsingh said in response to a question from a journalist about  the time frame for results to be given and how many out of the 553 samples sent to Carpha ( from Trinidad and Tobago) have been rejected. Admitting that the rest results go first to the Ministry of Health before an individual is informed, the Minister promised to investigate a case that was highlighted by journalist Akash Samaroo in which a 19 year of Trinidadian student returned from the UK on March 16th, with flu like symptoms and had primary contact with another student in Singapore who tested positive. The student was tested but was told four days later that her sample was lost. She was subsequently told her sample was rejected because she was not tested within five days of showing symptoms. The Minister of Health said he was not aware of the case.
Share