Military Takes Over COVID-19 Testing
24 April 2020
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Government has roped in medical personnel from the uniformed forces to assist in testing as many people as possible for Covid-19 in line with its target of testing at least 1 000 people per day.

This follows a recommendation from the Ministerial Taskforce on Covid-19 to employ all possible strategies to ensure that the set target is met.

Health and Child Care Minister Dr Obadiah Moyo said medical personnel from the army, police and prisons will now be involved in taking samples for confirmatory tests.

“We have now come up with a strategy. The taskforce has implored that we get support services from the medical core of the security services that is from the police, prisons and army.

“We have since roped them in so that they may be able to assist in the sampling process so that we come up with a sizable number of samples per day and this is going to happen countrywide,” said Dr Moyo.

The Government is yet to meet its target of 1 000 tests per day. It has broadened its case definition for Covid-19 to include anyone with a chronic condition in an institution of care, anyone exhibiting flu-like symptoms or pneumonia.

All health workers and all those who are working during the lockdown have also been included on the priority list of people who should be tested for Covid-19.

“Therefore, a sizeable number of people are going to be tested in line with our target. For example, if you look at nurses, we have at least 18 000 nurses, so that’s a big number on its own and this excludes the other health workers.

“So in terms of numbers, we are really pushing to make sure that we get more candidates enrolling and being sampled appropriately,” said Dr Moyo.

With 1 000 tests a day, Government is targeting to test at least 33 000 people by end of April.

A total of 4 990 people have been tested so far according to the Health Ministry and around 800 people are now getting tested each day.

-Newsday