BYisrael calls for more testing in Tobago

Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) deputy political leader Dr Faith BYisrael believes Tobago’s health authorities must significantly ramp up testing for covid19 to prevent further community spread.

At a news conference, BYisrael said the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) machine being used in Tobago cannot process a significant number of samples at once.

“From listening to the CMO (Dr Roshan Parasram) this week, when asked about how many samples can be tested in Tobago at a time, there was an understanding in Tobago that that machine can test four samples per hour.

“But my understanding is when the machine got to Tobago, they recognised that it could only test two samples per hour, which means if it runs for eight hours that is 16 samples.”

BYisrael added: “Now, on any given day before the election, 16 samples a day would not have been a bad thing. But we would recognise that with the volume of people who have gotten covid19 over the last couple of days, and with the volume of contacts those people have come into contact with, doing 16 samples within an eight-hour period certainly is not sufficient.”

She said there is now a significant backlog.

“That is why individuals who have been tested (in Tobago) are now being told their results may not be available for a week or so because there is this large backlog that needs to be cleared.”

BYisrael stressed the capacity to test needs to be ramped up significantly.

“We cannot keep going with that two samples per hour.”She said when one looks at the number of positive cases that are coming out in Trinidad everyday, one would recognise that sending samples to Trinidad would result in a lengthy wait period.

“That has always been my issue in Tobago with us needing our own testing facility that can do large-scale testing.

“I would have ensured that the Tobago Regional Health Authority had the capacity to test large scale in Tobago so that even if we didn’t need that large scale testing here, Trinidad could have actually sent their tests to Tobago because the response time would have been faster than what we are seeing in Trinidad.”

At the weekly post executive council media briefing on Wednesday last week, Health, Wellness and Family Development Secretary Tracy Davidson-Celestine admitted the island’s health sector does not have the capacity to test a large number of samples.

She said the division has procured a PCR machine, which is housed at the laboratory of the Scarborough General Hospital.

Davidson-Celestine said the machine can only process two tests an hour.

“Because of the demand that we currently have on hand, we have a backlog of about 127 cases and we have been looking at different pathways in which we can treat with the backlog within the shortest order,” she said.