Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the health ministry’s senior spokesperson. COURTESY PHOTO The Ministry of Health has attributed the delay in the release of coronavirus results to the tedious process of compiling results from different testing centres.
Mr Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the senior public relations officer of the Ministry of Health, said harmonising and analysing results from different border points and parts of the country takes a lot of time.
“We are now testing at border points and at the Uganda Virus Research Institute. Sometimes the delay is caused by the harmonising of the results and also receiving,” Mr Ainebyoona said yesterday.
Over the past few days, the ministry has been releasing the results of the previous day the following day, which was not the case initially.
Dr Ruth Jane Aceng, the Health minister, yesterday tweeted: “Dear all, testing of samples collected from the various points of entry and communities is still ongoing at the laboratory. Results will be communicated in the morning.”
Though GeneXpert machines were launched at some border points to enable truck drivers receive results before they proceed, this has not been done at all borders.
Therefore, some samples have to be collected and transported to laboratories in Kampala for testing.
“There are many others that come from different parts of the country. Those require 24 hours in terms of transportation and sample collection, but at the border it is within an hour. It has not been spread to all the borders and there are around 53 border points,” Mr Ainebyoona said.
Some of the laboratories that have been identified include Makerere University, Central Public Health Laboratories, Gulu University laboratory, Rakai Health Sciences lab, and Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital laboratory.
However, some of these laboratories have not yet started testing the Covid-19 samples.
As of Tuesday, Uganda’s coronavirus cases stood at 264 after four new cases. Of these, two are contacts of previously confirmed truck drivers.
The two contact cases have caused anger among the public as they blamed the government for allowing truck drivers to have contact with community.
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