Mass virus testing coming, but strain already showing

A mass-scale testing and screening drive for Covid-19 would see South Africa’s fight against the novel coronavirus extending to individual communities over the next few weeks.

Mobile teams in testing vans would be dispatched to high risk areas, including townships where recent cases have sparked fears of a heightened risk of the outbreak expanding to densely populated areas. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced these plans during a briefing in KwaZulu-Natal where he conducted a visit to monitor the outbreak in the province.

About 5,000 tracers were in circulation in various communities around the country, and this number would be doubled over the next few weeks as government intensified its bid to track as many cases as possible.

Mkhize explained the slow rate of reported cases in the country over the past few days, saying it was due to laboratories being overwhelmed with the number of specimens to be tested. He added the projected numbers for this week were much higher, at between 4,000 and 5,000, but for various reasons, the daily increase in Covid-19 positive cases had slowed down, with the latest figures at 1,353 cases.

Government is exploring different methods of Covid-19 testing, as it intensifies its race against the spread of the deadly disease.

According to Mkhize, in the next few weeks, a task team would be dispatched to research the best testing methods which would allow for a faster turnaround of results, allowing the health system to act faster on cases.

While laboratories are currently using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which is a molecular test, blood tests were used in other countries and this method allowed for earlier detection in patients who were asymptomatic.

Mkhize said a number of countries are using other testing methods, some of which are approved by the World Health Organisation, while others are not.

“The first one which we are using is called the PCR test, which is able to show you an active disease, so this rapid rest kit shows antibodies in the body and how the body is responding to fighting the virus, which means it can be positive but now it may be already finished fighting the disease,” said Mkhize, adding that the low risk of false positives was outweighed by the need to scale up the testing and tracing of cases as much as possible.

A shortage of testing equipment for the Covid-19 virus is already putting a strain on health workers at Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, as government prepares to roll-out its mass screening and testing nationwide.

A mass testing drive in Alexandra by the Gauteng Department of Health is already under way following cases of the disease materialising in the densely populated township. But doctors who spoke to The Citizen on Tuesday morning said not everybody who arrived with Covid-19 symptoms would be tested.

This is because of the dwindling number of available testing equipment. If risk factors such as recent travel and exposure to known cases were eliminated, it was unlikely there would be authorisation for most patients who arrived to be tested.

DA health spokesperson for Gauteng, Jack Bloom, said government said since around 95% of the tests conducted publicly and privately were negative so far, and this approach was in order.

But Bloom is concerned with the sudden drop in the rate at which new positive tests were being reported, which he believed could indicate a bottleneck in public testing results. “We are already about a week behind with our figures and we know from examples overseas that a week is a very long time in this epidemic and a test backlog is very concerning.

“At the same time there is probably a test bottleneck with the public tests, and the vast majority of the announcement came after another 3,000 tests, the last few days there have been about 3,000 tests that yielded these results. At first we were seeing huge jumps but these last few days…”

Bloom said he would like to know whether government is capable of conducting mass tests, especially now that the virus had moved from people living in more affluent areas to the more densely populated poorer areas such as Khayelitsha in Cape Town and Alexandra in Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, a company specialising in fever testing equipment, Geothermal, is apparently being inundated with inquiries from the private and public sector. The company’s managing director Philip Smerkovitz said while there was no tender for thermal testing equipment put out by government to his knowledge, several departments had made inquiries to the company.

“We have also been doing a lot of educating in the private and the public sector because many people are either not informed about the World Health Organisation (WHO) approved models for this medical grade thermal testing, or were simply trying to cut corners by procuring cheaper models which were not optimal for this purpose.”

Many of the screening machines in circulation, he added, were not calibrated to measure human temperature and required an unsafe distance in order to provide an accurate reading.

simnikiweh@citizen.co.za

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