Doctors raise alarm on covid19 tests at private labs

Several doctors are calling on the Health Ministry to look into reports that private labs are doing tests for covid19.

Reports have emerged that not only were labs doings tests but that testing kits were being sold.

Doctors, who spoke to Sunday Newsday on condition of anonymity, said the process is not regulated. One doctor said he had seen labs advertising testing for covid19.

“This is a kind of craziness, but we have a kind of crazy public health system because the Government should really be regulating that strongly. They should be putting out information in the public sector so that people can understand because there could be a lot of sensationalism and hype and people trying to make money off of it,” said the doctor.

The Health Ministry has previously advised that the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) has the only lab that is certified to test for covid19 and it alone can confirm positive or negative results of samples. And on Saturday, the ministry reported that 34 people had been tested for the virus but they were all negative.

The doctor, however, noted people are being misled about what they pay for when doctors send them to labs for testing, stressing that any sample a lab takes would have to be sent to CARPHA.

“A patient goes to a doctor, they have symptoms, they are sent to a lab, samples are taken. If they suspect covid19 they send the sample to CARPHA. That is the way it is supposed to work, so I really don’t understand how private labs can be advertising that they can do covid19 tests.

“CARPHA is about public health issues so there are certain category of diseases, what we call reportable diseases, and there are various levels of that and then there is covid19 at this time. You want all the testing to be done at one location. I haven’t looked into it with the other labs, but I guess they are just screening for regular flu, but then they have to send it off to CARPHA.

“They can put up a sign and advertise, but they are not doing testing there. All they are doing is collecting your sample and sending it off to CARPHA.”

The doctor said covid19 should not be about making money because it was a public health issue.

“It should be regulated so there is a cohesive response as a country. There should be standard protocols in place. In any medical institution, if you have a patient with flu-like symptoms then you usually have some screening criteria.”

Another doctor said testing for covid19 was very new and there were some labs that picked up “false positives.”

“It is a free market we are dealing with here. Even if a lab does a test it will still be rechecked at CARPHA. That is called validation.”

The doctor clarified that the tests were done by swabbing the nose and the back of the throat.

The doctor said anyone can go to any medical institution and do any number of tests, but at the end of the CARPHA was the last “port of call.”

“Government is not really organised about this. Usually with something like this the official testing would be at CARPHA.

“You can go to any medical institution, including a lab, but it is all sent to CARPHA to be done, so you can have national data and so on. That is what should be happening, but TT is a place where all kinds of things happen. There isn’t strong regulatory framework.”