Since last week Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has been talking about how the country will ramp up testing for Covid-19, yet laboratories have a backlog of more than 5 000 tests.
“Currently we are only confirming cases of those who show symptoms and the rest have to wait. This is the backlog. This is absurd as the virus incubates giving it time to spread. We can’t quarantine people who have not been confirmed yet because the tests are not available and that’s because they are not showing symptoms,” said the doctor.
“If we are not testing enough, we are not picking up the cases.” This, she said, could mean that the government will end up working with a “skewed picture” of things as it uses the 21-day lockdown to see how Covid-19 has spread. With the disease taking up to two weeks to burn out of people who don’t end up hospitalised, the government would expect the over 700 people who have currently tested positive to either be in hospital or better before the end of the lockdown.
“We regret this deeply and have tried wherever possible to prioritise tests for high-risk individuals, those that are hospitalised, and healthcare workers,” said Vardas. “Worldwide demand has created bottlenecks in the supply of N95 and surgical masks, nasopharyngeal swabs, gloves and Covid-19 testing kits. Our laboratories are struggling to meet demand and turnaround times due to the inconsistency in supply of materials required to produce reliable results,” read the letter.
The United Kingdom, which has close to 10 000 infected people and seen more than 400 deaths, will be ramping up its testing to about 10 000 people a day, according to their prime minister, Boris Johnson.
Can we have some realistic numbers.
This guy is dreaming. 30 000 tests per day by mid April. UK did 9000 this last week. We aren’t even doing 3000 per day.
A backlog of 5000 tests and apparently only circa 35000 tests have been conducted nationwide. We should be testing at least 10000 a day by now.
Have you been to the labs? National labs are chaos
Out of millions less than 1000 are showing mild symptoms and for this the lives of millions were destroyed with no though at all
I wish I could help. Is there no way for the universities to become involved?
yet laboratories have a backlog of more than 5 000 tests.- so those are those that showed symptoms the actual number of infection considering incubation period and not knowing or having any symptoms yet - just basically pushed the number past 927 most like over a 1000+ 🤢
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