MARK BAS­SANT

In mid-March WHO’s di­rec­tor-gen­er­al Dr Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus had this ad­vice, “We have a sim­ple mes­sage for all coun­tries: test, test, test.”

The idea of prop­er test­ing for COVID-19 in T&T has come un­der in­tense scruti­ny over the past few days as the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to face mount­ing crit­i­cism and scep­ti­cism over the num­ber of ac­tu­al tests that are be­ing per­formed on a dai­ly ba­sis.

The ques­tion of the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of tests per­formed by CARPHA was brought in­to full view of the pub­lic af­ter al­le­ga­tions were made by Crime Watch host Ian Al­leyne on Tues­day night at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal- who claimed that he had test­ed neg­a­tive twice and was giv­en his dis­charge pa­pers.

But a let­ter is­sued from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice yes­ter­day signed by at­tor­ney T Ramkissoon stat­ed that Al­leyne had test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 on March 24, and April 8, 2020. Four days lat­er the CMO in­di­cat­ed that Al­leyne test­ed neg­a­tive for the COVID-19 virus on April 12, but two days lat­er on April 14 he test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus.

CMO Dr Roshan Paras­ram, when ques­tioned at yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health COVID-19 press con­fer­ence, would on­ly say that the is­sue will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed. But the CMO failed to go any fur­ther in ex­plain­ing why these tests could have turned up faulty; ei­ther giv­ing false pos­i­tives or false neg­a­tives.

The is­sue of test­ing has be­come a mat­ter for “grave con­cern” ac­cord­ing to a vi­rol­o­gist speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the con­di­tion of strict anonymi­ty since the coun­try record­ed its first of­fi­cial COVID-19 case one month and four days ago.

“Re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, we do not have the re­sources to test one mil­lion peo­ple in a 7-0 day pe­ri­od. So re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, if we want­ed to get the da­ta, we need to make an in­formed de­ci­sion, on how many can we test to give sta­tis­ti­cal­ly rel­e­vant da­ta. We are skirt­ing around the is­sue,” the vi­rol­o­gist added.

The domi­no ef­fect across the world and the se­vere health and eco­nom­ic im­pact lat­er led to tighter reg­u­la­tions by the T&T gov­ern­ment as they at­tempt­ed to sti­fle the spread of the virus.

Ide­al­ly, if the sit­u­a­tion had im­proved on April 15 the stay at home sanc­tions would have been lift­ed.

But on April 6 Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced to the na­tion the stay at home mea­sures would be ex­tend­ed to April 30.

Test fig­ures have drawn crit­i­cism from the pub­lic and oth­er sec­tors who have clam­oured that more tests are need­ed.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh gave that as­sur­ance a week ago when he hoped to get the pri­vate labs on­board to fa­cil­i­tate in­creased test­ing across the coun­try. On Good Fri­day Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh again re­it­er­at­ed the min­istry’s promise to ramp up the num­ber of tests with the in­tro­duc­tion of ‘sur­veil­lance test­ing.’ This es­sen­tial­ly would be for per­sons who did not present with symp­toms and had not been lo­cat­ed through con­tact trac­ing.

Based on the da­ta pro­vid­ed over the last 40 days by the Min­istry of Health, Guardian Me­dia was able to cal­cu­late that of the 1,282 tests sub­mit­ted to CARPHA an av­er­age of 32.05 tests were be­ing con­duct­ed on a dai­ly ba­sis thus far. Was this enough?

Did these sam­ple tests in­clude per­sons who were retest­ed? Did they in­clude sam­ples that were re­ject­ed?

If this turned out to be the case then it would es­sen­tial­ly mean that the av­er­age num­ber of peo­ple test­ed is far less than an­tic­i­pat­ed.

Be­tween March 6 and March 19 - one day be­fore the Trinidad na­tion­als were brought back to the coun­try from the Cos­ta Favolosa cruise off Guade­loupe the av­er­age num­ber of per­sons test­ed by the Health Min­istry dai­ly, even be­fore the coun­try con­firmed its first case on March 12- was a mea­gre 8.8 per­sons based on the fig­ures cal­cu­lat­ed.

On March 19 the fig­ures stood at 155 COVID-19 tests and that fig­ure jumped to 250 tests on March 20th af­ter the re­turn­ing 68 na­tion­als were part of those test­ed along with oth­er cit­i­zens. On March 21, 34 ad­di­tion­al tests were con­duct­ed bring­ing the fig­ure to 284. One day lat­er on March 22- that fig­ure was 306 tests with just 16 more per­sons test­ed.

On March 23 the Min­istry of Health then an­nounced that they were ex­pand­ing the test­ing cri­te­ria and the fol­low­ing day they an­nounced the ar­rival of 4,000 test kits in­to the coun­try.

Pri­or to this, they had in­di­cat­ed on­ly those with a trav­el his­to­ry or who had come in­to con­tact with per­sons who had trav­elled would have been test­ed. With the widen­ing test cri­te­ria, those who met the case pro­file could now be test­ed.

By March 25, the num­ber of tests per­formed was 370 and this jumped to 415 and then 467 on March 26 and 27th re­spec­tive­ly.

For the re­main­ing days of March 28-31 - a mere 83 cas­es were done, which just worked out to just over 20 tests per day.

Be­tween April 1-4 there were 250 tests done at an av­er­age of about 62.5 peo­ple test­ed - as of April 1 there were 586 tests con­duct­ed to date and by April 4 there were 736 tests.

On April 5 the num­ber of peo­ple test­ed rose to 825 which meant 89 per­sons were test­ed in a 24-hour pe­ri­od.

The sharp rise in num­bers here could have meant that many per­sons from the cruise and oth­er­wise who had ini­tial­ly test­ed pos­i­tive would have been sub­ject­ed to an­oth­er round of tests.

On April 8, the Min­istry of Health said the coun­try had con­duct­ed 974 COVID-19 tests and by the fol­low­ing day that rose to 1045 tests- some 71 ad­di­tion­al tests con­duct­ed in 24 hours. Again pos­si­bly due to sev­er­al per­sons again be­ing retest­ed with oth­er new per­sons.

From April 10-14 there were 21,24,26 and 22 tests done re­spec­tive­ly on a dai­ly ba­sis bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of tests for the last 39 days to 1,282 tests with ran­dom test­ing ex­pect­ed to have start­ed on Tues­day last.