The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) continues to make significant contributions during the COVID-19 crisis, as 4000 more testing kits were donated to the Public Health Ministry.
PAHO Country Representative, Dr William Adu-Krow
Country Representative, Dr William Adu-Krow told the media on Friday that over 10,000 kits were given to Guyana since the pandemic started. Each kit is complete, comprising a swab, transport medium, a special enzyme, probes, and primer.
He explained that these supplies were to be stored at a specific temperature before and after a sample is collected, which caused one batch to be damaged during transport. Nevertheless, it was replaced.
After a test is conducted, health officials are required to transport the sample to the National Public Health Reference Laboratory in Georgetown within 24 hours.
“It comes with a bottle that you put the swab in that you transport it in. It has to be transported in 24 hours and when it gets to the lab, we have primers, probes that they use…If you have a small sample, it can be magnified so that you can actually see the virus particles. Then we have the enzymes that react to the particles,” Dr Adu-Krow outlined.
There are many factors to be considered before a person is listed as a suspected case. These include anyone with a fever and cough or difficulty breathing within the last 14 days prior to the onset of signs and symptoms; a person with recent travel history to a COVID-19 infected country; if there is community transmission during that time, or contact with a confirmed case; or exposure to a health facility where there are cases of the virus.
If a person omits or conceals any aspect of this information, it is likely that they might not be tested while they are possibly carrying the virus. From the time the sample reaches the lab, it takes eight hours for the results to be available.
Recently, Director of Disease Control, Dr Nadia Liu reassured the populace that the standard for testing ensured that there were no anomalies in the results.
“The country has adopted the World Health Organisation’s Recommendations on testing…The test that we use at the Reference Lab has more than 95 per cent sensitivity and specificity. What that basically means is that the first two genomic fragments are specific for all SARS-COVID virus and the third fragment is only detectable for COVID-19 virus. That’s why this test is not a screening test, it’s a confirmation test,” Dr Liu has been quoted as saying.
