People may be concealing symptoms, not being very truthful – Director of Disease Control

COVID-19 outbreak…

While testing for the novel coronavirus has continued using standards set out by the World Health Organisation, there are still persons in the population who may be subjected to testing but have gone under the radar due to inaccurate information about their condition or history.

This is according to Director of Disease Control, Dr Nadia Liu, who on Thursday shared this position during a discussion by the Public Health Ministry. Dr Liu said that this makes it a difficult task to track suspected cases.
“I believe there are cases out there, and I think what we have are people who are not being very truthful. The information is very misleading, and it’s very difficult sometimes to track the contacts that the suspected or confirmed case would’ve given,” she pointed out.
There are many factors to be considered before a person is listed as a suspected case. Those factors 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 country; if there is a 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.
“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 stated.
At the moment, testing is done as soon as it is needed, rather than in batches. From the time the sample reaches the lab, it takes eight hours for the results to be available. Testing is done only by the National Public Health Reference Laboratory, located at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
Dr Liu explained, “You would try batch testing so you can avoid wastage of reagents and consumables. Nonetheless, because we have to respond to the patient’s need for treatment irrespective of whether its pharmacological or nonpharmacological, we have a turnaround time to give the results in 24 hours.”