For two close contact suspects
By ESTHER NURIA
Newsroom, Honiara
TESTS conducted on the two students suspected of having COVID-19 after being in contact with the first confirmed positive student have turned out negative.
Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MHMS) Permanent Secretary (PS) Pauline McNeil announced the good news in a press conference yesterday.
“Now we have one confirmed case and two negative cases,” PS McNeil said yesterday.
She said her ministry working on the assessment with the index (positive) case has managed to put together the assessment report in less than 24 hours.
She highlighted the ministry team is working very hard to compile everything and they will continue to review and validate the report.
The Permanent Secretary also confirmed all the tests have been done for cause validation through the two machines qPCR and GeneXpert available at the National Referral Hospital (NRH).
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in his nation-wide address last week said that the country’s laboratory has scored 100 percentages agreement to results of five panels from the Hong Kong Assessment team and three sub-regional panels from the Pacific Para-medical Training Centre in New Zealand.
He said this mean that the country’s COVID-19 testing has so far been 100 percentages accurate, effective and is of high standards.
“We should be proud that our testing capabilities continue to provide quality COVID-19 testing service to protect our citizens against this deadly virus,” he said.
Meanwhile, the paper understands an investigation would be undertaken to find out why the student who was confirmed positive got negative results following the three tests in Manila, but few days later upon arrival in Honiara tested positive.
