COVID-19 Testing Continues; MOH May Switch to Targeted Approach

Marvin Manzanero

Back to the coronavirus…random testing continues three times a week. The Ministry of Health says that they are screening all persons with flu-like symptoms that show up in the health system, but so far, there are no highly suspect cases. But in the coming weeks, they may be changing the approach to testing. Here’s how Doctor Marvin Manzanero explains it.

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“We are now into our day thirty-eight of having confirmed the last four cases. Since then we have not had any other case. I don’t think we have had any highly suspect case. We have been screening anybody who is showing up in the health system and it can be public and private that has a severe acute respiratory illness or people who have influenza-like illnesses. The numbers in both of these are not really that high. We do have cases, we acknowledge that, but they are not really coming necessarily to the flu clinic. I was in Corozal and Orange Walk yesterday, San Narciso as well, to see how the flows of the flu clinics go and we are not seeing that high number of cases that we had been seeing at the start of the year. Nonetheless, we have been continuing to do swabbing and testing of samples and certain elements of random sampling have happened.   Depending on what we find for the rest of the week and maybe next week, going into June, we may be scaling down the populations that we are testing. I think we are going to have more targeted approaches in terms of who we screen for COVID-19, being that they are not having significant signs and symptoms.”