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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

COVID test confusion as figures draw criticism

by

Mark Bassant
1910 days ago
20200415
The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) at Jamaica Boulevard, St Clair.

The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) at Jamaica Boulevard, St Clair.

KERWIN PIERRE

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.

COVID-19


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