Ministry of Health and Wellness Signs New Statutory Instrument

A new statutory instrument, S.I. number two of 2021, came into effect on January fourteenth.  This S.I. addresses the importation of COVID-19 tests into the country.  The Ministry of Health and Wellness now has the sole responsibility to approve the importation of COVID tests.  It also gives the ministry the sole authority to approve any person or entity wanting to offer to test for the virus.  Minister Chebat says that at this time, only PCR and Antigen tests are approved by the ministry.  He says that the S.I. was necessary to control the importation of COVID-19 tests to meet the ministry’s objective.

Michel Chebat

Michel Chebat, Minister of health and Wellness

“We want to make sure that we are in control of whose importing and whose conducting these tests because part of the whole process of testing, the objective, is for us in the ministry to know who in our population is infected. And so it is important for us to be able to get the data from people who want to import and people who actually want to conduct the testing.  There are many people who were requesting permission to import the test. So there are a couple of things happenings, Hipolito. First of all we need to be able to check the efficacy of the test and we need to make sure that they are being validated to ensure that they actually perform the way they are represented to perform. That is why. Secondly we need to be able to have the correct information arising as a result of these tests. So we have many companies who are into pharmaceuticals who are requesting permission from the ministry to import these tests. And so what the ministry has decided is that if you want import you need to then apply for a license in order to do so.”