Ministry of Health Shifts Testing Strategy

Marvin Manzanero

Earlier today, the Director of Health Services gave an update on Ask the Experts webcast on the persons being allowed into the country legally at the border points. These persons, he noted, were overseas for medical reasons. Moving forward, the Ministry of Health has modified the way it will be conducting testing, particularly for those who are coming from overseas.  Here’s how he explains it.

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“Families have started arriving through the Guatemalan border; two different families arrived last week Friday. These are people who have medical conditions and so they were allowed to go and quarantine home. We have had notes of people who had sought medical care outside of Belize and have died outside and we are in the process of also bring the cadaver back home. We are aware of people coming in through the northern border and are now going to start going into different facilities. Based on the experience we have had with patient nineteen, we have decided at the Ministry that we are going to shift around the testing process. We are no longer going to be doing random testing in the general public, in asymptomatic individuals. We are going to shift it around. We are still going to continue testing anybody with flu-like symptoms; anybody with influenza-like illnesses or is hospitalized for severe acute respiratory illness. But we are now going to be testing people once they start arriving in Belize and prior to them leaving the quarantine facility.”