The Guyana Government is currently discussing the use of at-home Covid test kits amid a rush from persons to get tested for the novel coronavirus as positive cases continue to rapidly increase.
This was announced today during an emergency press conference hosted by President Dr Irfaan Ali who noted that the at-home kits will significantly reduced the long lines at testing facilities countrywide.
“In many developed jurisdictions now, they’re not giving everyone the tests as part of their management protocols and they’re encouraging home tests now. the use of home kits, as part of their response agenda. This is something that we have to look at also, rather than having long lines for PCR,” he explained, noting that the reliability of home kits has tremendously improved.
When asked whether government will make these kits available to households, President Ali explained that discussions are still ongoing.
“As part of exploring is exploring the costs associated…there are still issues in the supply chain…that is what we’re analyzing now in terms of the home testing…It is something that is being discussed,” he noted.
Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony has already cautioned persons against “swamping” the testing facilities, noting that persons who believe they were exposed to the virus must wait five days before getting tested.
“As the numbers are going up, I know that some people tend to panic a little bit. So, if they heard somebody tested positive, they want to go right away to get tested,” the Health Minister pointed out, noting that this should not be the case.
According to him, if someone believes they were potentially exposed to the virus, they should wait at least five days before going to get tested.
Exposure, he explained, means being in the same room or in close proximity with an infected individual for more than 15 minutes, especially if neither person was wearing a mask properly.
“Wait at least five days before you go and get tested. If you go and get tested (right away), it’s going to show negative, if you go and get tested the next day, it’s going to show negative,” Dr Anthony posited.
“So don’t go and swamp the testing sites. We see a lot of people showing up at testing sites and…demanding to be tested but if they do that too early, you’re not going to know what’s your true status,” he added.
The only exception to waiting, the Minister explained, is for persons who start to exhibit symptoms right away.
The Health Minister also assured that there is enough testing capacity locally.
“We have a lot of capacity at the National Public Health reference lab. I think we have the capability of doing at least 2000 PCRs over a 24-hour period, that’s fairly large. We also have gene-experts’ machines that we have placed at the various regional hospitals so they can do some amount of testing there and with antigen testing, it doesn’t require much of an infrastructure, just the test kits. We have adequate test kits across the public health system and they are being used.”
“So, I don’t think, in this point in time, that we will be overwhelmed. In addition, we have more than twelve private facilities that have been certified to do testing, so it’s a mixture of PCR and antigen testing.”
