The door is open for COVID-19 home self-test kits ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh at Mon­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence.

He said the min­istry is look­ing for­ward to its use lo­cal­ly and it has cleared a path for its ap­proval and im­por­ta­tion in­to the coun­try.

“The process to get ap­proval for home kits is a sim­ple one. We just ask im­porters to just sub­mit your doc­u­ments to Chem­istry, Food and Drugs and they are com­mit­ted to turn­ing around this (ap­proval) in the short­est pos­si­ble space of time,” he said.

The on­ly cri­te­ria for the kits, he said, will be that they are reg­is­tered with the coun­try of man­u­fac­ture.

He not­ed that while the kits are in­ex­pen­sive and pro­vide fast re­sults, they are not as ac­cu­rate as a PCR test. He warns there are a num­ber of vari­ables that could lead to a false-neg­a­tive test re­sult.

“The is­sue with the home kits is they are good for test­ing the symp­to­matic per­sons and if you get a pos­i­tive you could re­ly on it. But the is­sue is if you get a neg­a­tive you need to have that con­firmed by a PCR and that is the glob­al prac­tice around the world,” he said.

“These kits do have a place but...there is a vari­abil­i­ty due to a va­ri­ety of fac­tors.”

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh al­so in­di­cat­ed the dai­ly up­date will al­so get a facelift for 2022, now dis­play­ing in­for­ma­tion in a dif­fer­ent for­mat. Chief among the changes is the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed pa­tients hos­pi­talised ver­sus those who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed. It will al­so de­pict the same clas­si­fi­ca­tions for fa­tal­i­ties.

“The main rea­son that gov­ern­ments and pub­lic health of­fi­cials around the world are read­just­ing re­port­ing is to show the clear dis­par­i­ty be­tween the vac­ci­nat­ed and the un­vac­ci­nat­ed,” he said.