South Africa’s private health laboratories are taking most of the strain testing for COVID-19 disease, as state laboratories lag, having processed only one-in-six of tests, writes MedicalBrief.
News24 quotes an epidemiologist, who is directly involved in testing and battling the virus, as saying that the numbers are already outdated once announced, and that it isn’t “new”.
Rather, the spike in confirmed infections came about as a result of private labs, which are also conducting testing, “battling with turnaround times”. This is due to the large demand for tests on private labs.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said that of the 12,815 tests conducted as of 23 March, 10,000 were done by private labs and around 2,000 by the state laboratory services.
There was also a slight delay between the finalising of results and the communicating of these to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the epidemiologist said. This means that, at any given moment, when government announces figures of infection, there is a high probability that the announced figure is already outdated while further positive tests are in the process of being finalised, and their results communicated.
[link url="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/labs-under-pressure-as-covid-19-testing-increases-while-private-public-sectors-rally-20200324"]Full News24 report[/link]