CARPHA covid19 testing process explained

LISA INDAR, the assistant director of surveillance, disease prevention and control at the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), says the organisation is providing accurate results on covid19 to the relevant authorities and in an ethical manner.

Indar gave a short address at the Health Ministry's online media conference on Wednesday, to address the issue of sample testing at CARPHA, while also participating in a virtual Caricom heads of government meeting.

She said: "The CARPHA medical microbiology laboratory (CMML) is the regional reference laboratory and it currently conducts tests for suspect covid19 cases for member states, using the WHO recommended testing protocols.

"The laboratory currently tests all suspect cases that meet the criteria as recommended by the WHO case definition. Currently, samples can only be sent to CARPHA from designated national health laboratory in a country. So for Trinidad, this means the Trinidad Public Health Laboratory."

Once CARPHA receives the test, it will produce the result within 24-48 hours, and send it directly to the chief medical officer, who is then responsible for its dissemination.

"CARPHA cannot and will not disseminate any country's results directly to patients or individuals," Indar said.

"It is an ethical breach and constitutes a violation of the agency's ethical standards to share confidential information with unauthorised persons."

She said CMML has all the positive and negative controls to ensure results are accurate.

"The universally accepted criteria for discharge for persons who tested positive for covid19 is two consecutive negative results separated by a 24-hour period.

"But what does this mean exactly? First, if a person is tested positive for covid19, they would be required to be isolated at a government health facility for a 14-day period before any repeat testing can be done.

"After those 14 days, the covid test will be repeated.

"If repeated and it is positive, then it will be retested after a seven-day period."