MOH Provides an Update on COVID-19 Testing

One hundred and forty persons have been tested from all over the country for the corona virus. Four are positive: two in san Pedro, one in Belize City and now San Ignacio. It means that the northern and southern parts of the country so are so far without cases.  The breakdown shows that fifty percent of those tested are from the Belize District, including the cayes; twelve are from Corozal; ten from Orange Walk; thirty-two from Cayo; ten from the Stann Creek District and seven from Toledo.

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“When we started the week we had 98 tests done and we are up to 140 tests done and 25 done yesterday; that is the biggest number of tests done in a single day and the previous day we did twelve tests. So, in two days we did thirty seven tests. In that batch that was processed yesterday one test is positive which is the fourth test we reported earlier in the day.  In terms of the testing that we had done yesterday, in terms of the twenty-five tests, we had gone in search particularly of health care workers who are having any sign or symptom and we are trying to broaden the scope of who is eventually being test. As you would know that is one of the recommendations and that is what we trying now to span it across the country.   One of the concerns had been why tests are coming out so late, but what we are doing at the central lab is that we are pooling samples from across the country. So, we are giving labs the cut of time – four pm for samples to get to Belize. Once it gets there, there is a process of extraction and the two lab technicians who were on a different forum explained what it is that they do. Once that extraction has started, how it is that they load and prepare the machine and once we have a screen test you would have to do another confirmatory test to confirm the presence of the virus SARS-COVID2.”

We will have more from the experts later in the newscast.