Carisa Lee

For just $200, some­one can pur­chase a COVID-19 Anti­gen Rapid Test kit at a phar­ma­cy.

At least that was the ex­pe­ri­ence of one woman who vis­it­ed a Port-of-Spain drug­store yes­ter­day.

“I saw on Tik­Tok that you guys are sell­ing Rapid Anti­gen Test…I’d like to get one, please,” the woman asked.

With­out hes­i­ta­tion, the sales­woman be­hind the counter pulled out the test with the brand name High­top and sold it to the cus­tomer, who asked if there were spe­cif­ic in­struc­tions to use the test that was made in Chi­na.

“All the in­struc­tions on it…you swab­bing the same way like in the hos­pi­tal,” the work­er said.

She could not say whether their phar­ma­cy was the on­ly one sell­ing the home kits.

Last week, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said home test­ing kits would soon come to Trinidad and To­ba­go and im­porters could ap­ply to the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion to bring them in.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials about ap­provals for sale to the pub­lic and the min­is­ter re­spond­ed via What­sApp to say he passed the “tech­ni­cal ques­tions” to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram.

Paras­ram was al­so con­tact­ed but up un­til press time we re­ceived no fur­ther re­sponse.

Head of the Phar­ma­cy Board An­drew Ra­haman said he had no idea that phar­ma­cies were giv­en the green light to sell COVID-19 home test­ing kits but said they were not the ones to blame.

“I don’t work Cus­toms so I don’t know how it came in­to the coun­try,” Ra­haman said.

The head of the Board said since the min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment last week, phar­ma­cies start­ed con­tact­ing him to ask when the sale of the home kits would be­gin but he said he got no of­fi­cial word from the Min­istry of Health.

“I was sup­posed to get in­for­ma­tion on what is the process. When that hap­pened I start­ed hear­ing that there was a whole­saler in Trinidad, a well-known one, a le­git­i­mate one, that had the test in Trinidad al­ready,” he re­vealed.

Ra­haman said his on­ly con­clu­sion was that the whole­saler start­ed sales when the min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ment.

“The onus would be on the whole­salers to get the au­thor­i­ty to im­port and the au­thor­i­ty to re­sell to phar­ma­cies,” he said.

The phar­ma­cist said there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that ap­provals were giv­en by the Min­istry of Health but if no of­fi­cial body or the whole­salers know how the Rapid Anti­gen Tests reached be­hind phar­ma­cy coun­ters it could have been brought here il­le­gal­ly.

“I’m talk­ing about suit­case traders now. How does it move from cus­tomers bond to suit­case traders’ hand with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion?” he asked.

How­ev­er it got here, Ra­haman said he be­lieves phar­ma­cists should ad­min­is­ter the tests to en­sure that they’re done ac­cu­rate­ly and the re­sults are sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Health.

“I am hop­ing that the on­ly ones that they ap­prove are the ones that are not as in­va­sive to have to go to the back of the throat be­cause some­one ad­min­is­ter­ing for them­selves, they will not be able to send it far back enough to get the prop­er sam­ple,” he ex­plained.

The High­top one-step test with in­struc­tions that sug­gest it be done by a health pro­fes­sion­al gives re­sults in 15 min­utes.

It came with a swab to in­sert in a nose for 15 sec­onds, an ex­trac­tion reagent (mix­ture) to dip the swab in and shake for ten sec­onds and the rapid test to drop the mix­ture in af­ter­wards. The per­son then waits to see whether there is one line (neg­a­tive) or two lines (pos­i­tive). In­struc­tions came in sev­er­al lan­guages.