April 14, 2020

More Questions Than Answers on COVID-19 Testing In T&T.

By Newsroom

What is the true state of the Ministry of Health’s testing capacity of Covid-19 cases?

That’s the question  from Opposition Leader Kamla Persad Bissessar  who noted that ‘official testing statistics have barely budged in weeks,” while outlining what she calls “glaring inconsistencies:”

  •   “The low Covid positive numbers do not reflect the need for the Government’s drastic, prolonged national shutdown to combat the disease’s potential uncontrollable spread in T&T • The Health Minister keeps warning the population about the impending devastating “first and second’ wave of the Coronavirus spread.The Government must, therefore, be fully aware of the true state of the Coronavirus spread across the country • The obvious conclusion, therefore, is that the State’s Covid-19 testing apparatus, equipment and capacity continue to be woefully lacking, and now, dangerously inadequate,” Mrs Bissessar noted in a statement on Tuesday morning. “The Health Ministry’s Covid-19 official data demonstrates  widespread under testing as evidenced by the following facts:   On April 9, 987 tests had been completed • By April 13, 1141 tests had been completed • This means that in four days only 154 tests were completed • The Health Ministry has put out three releases in the last 24 hours stating that Covid positive cases remain at 113 however, for all three releases, the tests numbers have remained at 1141
“Therefore, the number of Covid positive cases did not increase because the number of tests did not increase,” Mrs Bissessar noted. “While Global data shows that 10-20% of persons tested in other nations are Covid positive,T&T should have therefore done about 10,000 Covid-19 tests by now, instead of merely over 1000.   “Had the Health Ministry increased testing, in compliance with the WHO’s recommendation to so do, results would have reflected a considerably more accurate picture of the real incidence of local Covid positive cases,” she observed. “This state of affairs is unacceptable. It further begs the question as to whether the Government is deliberately keeping the Covid-19 at a minimum to project the false impression to the public that they are managing the crisis,” she said as she  called on the Health Minister and  Chief Medical Officer  (CMO)to state:
  1.  How many actual unique individuals were tested by CARPHA and how many are retests, rather than the number of samples? Many persons would have had retests on more than one occasion to determine eligibility to be released, so the official figures are misleading.
  2.  How many deaths with flu-like symptoms that were never tested for Covid-19 have been recorded as suspected cases? Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are many patients at hospitals with Covid like symptoms who are not being tested, with some deaths as well.
  3.  What is the total number of deaths in our population from January 2020 to date as compared to the total number of deaths for the same period from January 2019 to April 2019? Has there been an increase in total deaths year on year?
  4.  From January 2020 to present day, how many deaths were recorded of persons who exhibited flu like symptoms but were refused Covid-19 tests? How many of these deaths were instead listed as lower respiratory tract infections, acute asthmatic attacks, pneumonia, or heart failure? The Regional Health Authorities must give that information to ensure transparency.
  5. How did the Health authorities know that Covid-19 was not in T&T before March, 2020, when there was no testing taking place? “To make such a claim is baseless, unscientific and misleading based on the fact that no Covid-19 testing was done during that period, as well as before, during and shortly after Carnival 2020,” the opposition leader stated in her press release on Tuesday morning.
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