CMO: More testing capacity by Monday

PAULA LINDO

CMO Dr Roshan Parasram has said the Health Ministry hopes to have certification of its capacity to do PCR testing by April 27.

He said this will allow for community testing outside of the Caribbean Public Health Agency’s guidelines.

The method being used to test for covid19 is polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the ministry continues to build capacity for doing this test, Parasram said.

He said antibody testing is not being used at present because there is no approved test for covid19 antibodies. Those on the market are not specific for covid19 and will give false results, he said.

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said 11 more people would be "de-escalated" from the Couva facility today once all goes well. There are 23 people at the Couva facility, with none in the ICU or in the high dependency unit.

He said there were 31 patients at the Home of Football, 12 at Sangre Grande, and 33 at Tacarigua – these are the Barbados contingent. The CMO said he has not yet received the results of their tests done in Barbados.

The Health Minister said 1,454 tests had been carried out thus far, with 1,220 unique tests and 234 repeated tests. There have been 115 positive tests thus far, with 52 from the cruise ship.

There are four new discharges, taking the total number of discharges to 41. There have been eight deaths thus far.