Following the spike in COVID -19 cases and deaths in Uganda,the Ministry of Health has decided to cahnge the mode of testing for COVID-19 .
Under the changes ,the ministry will now priotrize persons with COVID-19 symptoms [symptomatic] over those without [asymptomatic] unlike before where all were considered equally.
The Ministry has now broken the testing process into 4 categories,the most urgent attention will be first given to red labeeled persons presenting symptoms like fever, cough, flu, shortness of breath and results will out within 24 hours .
The second are Orange labelled consist of symptomatic contacts or alerts whos e results will be out between 24-36 hours,third green labbeled for persons from surveilence programs while the fourth is yellow for persons from community based testing whose results return between 48 and 72 hours.
Dr Charles Olaro, the Director of Clinical Services says that prioritizing tests will play a big role in reducing some of the deaths and enable them to maximise tests kits that are becoming hard to procure due to global shortages.
“At times we have patients that are hospitalised but don’t have a positive test for us to handle them the way they need. If these people can be tested and we get their results early, we can give them treatment in a timely fashion,” he added.
