Guy, ministry spar over COVID test reports

Health ministry officials have pushed back at concerns expressed by Opposition Spokesman Dr Morais Guy who raised questions about the accuracy of daily reports of COVID-19 results, including those of thousands of travellers who flow through the island’s airports.

Citing that about 25 flights leave Montego Bay daily, and 17 were scheduled to depart Kingston on Thursday, Guy estimated that more than 4,200 test results should be expected every day.

The Ministry of Health and Wellness reported 1,972 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and antigen results in its December 15 update.

“We are not getting those numbers sufficiently, and even if we are not getting them on time, if you add up, you still have a significant lag period … ,” Guy, a medical doctor, told a joint select committee of Parliament COVID-19 on Thursday.

“The vast majority of those who travel, except those going to Canada or to Cayman, require an antigen test.”

But Dr Michelle Hamilton, director of the National Laboratory Services, cautioned that there was often a wide disparity in the volumes of both tests.

PCRs - considered the gold standard because of their accuracy - have a longer turnaround for results while antigen tests are less precise but take 15-20 minutes to be processed.

“Yesterday, we had 259 antigen tests, but we had over 1,000 PCR tests reported for private travellers,” Hamilton said.

“Some days you have less antigen than PCR, and other days it’s the reverse. All of the tests may not be captured, and this is why we continue to follow up on the labs that are out there.”

Hamilton said the health ministry has an approval system, in collaboration with the Jamaica National Agency for Accreditation (JANAAC), to ensure that labs are approved by the ministry and/or pre-accredited by JANAAC.

“What we are aiming to do is ensure that all of the labs that are testing are approved or pre-accredited because those have a direct relationship with us in terms of reporting, and at the same we need to ensure that labs that do not have this approval or pre-accreditation status are not offering tests, because that is where if a gap exists, that’s where you’d be likely to find the gap,” Hamilton explained.

Guy was also concerned that delayed reporting could impact the daily positivity rate recorded.

CONTROL OVER STANDARDS

But Dunstan Bryan, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health, acknowledged that the ministry did not necessarily have control over reporting but over the standards by which it was undertaken.

“Whether or not they comply with the standard is [another issue]. What the surveillance team does is that they calibrate the information to reflect the information that they have,” the permanent secretary said.

Bryan said further that not all antigen tests from the private sector are included in the calculation of the daily positivity rate.

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton also cautioned that antigen tests of unsymptomatic persons could translate to a number of false negatives.

National epidemiologist Dr Karen Webster-Kerr said that Jamaica had recorded a seven-day positivity rate of less than five per cent - the globally accepted benchmark - for the first time in months.

Wednesday’s positivity rate was 3.3 per cent while the seven-day average was 4.9 per cent.

Webster-Kerr said that Jamaicans in their 70s had the highest per-capita vaccination compliance, followed by those in their 60s.

“We would want to have coverage in these age groups to be 90 per cent or higher to really have the best effect and protection from severe disease and death,” she said.

The national epidemiologist said that COVID-19 cases are decreasing and that the geographical spread of the virus is low, with a reproductive rate of 0.9.

The reproductive rate measures the number of new infections potentially caused by each positive patient.

“The vaccination level at this time is too low to have an effect on transmission although it’s obvious that it is having an effect on severe disease and deaths,” Webster-Kerr said.

All vaccinated persons 18 years and older have been urged to get COVID-19 booster shots.

“If the science supports boosters within a particular protocol, it is very logical, I believe, indeed very sensible for those who have taken the time to take the first and second dose, as the case may be, and now require a third in the form of a booster,” the minister said, adding that that action would help diminish the risk of dumping vaccines.

The country has discarded approximately 300,000 doses.

Jamaica, as at Wednesday, recorded 91,927 coronavirus cases and 2,433 deaths.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com