The Ministry of Health will no longer be issuing discharge certificates for persons who were on home isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 and PCR tests will now be used only for a small category of persons.
This was revealed by Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony during his daily COVID-19 update yesterday where he stated that once persons have completed their prescribed isolation period, there would be no need to have a discharge certificate to return to work.
“As of today we will stop issuing those discharge certificates, so once you have completed your home isolation you can go back to work, there is no need for you to take a discharge certificate,” he said. To this end the minister noted that no public sector agency requires a discharge certificate for employees to return to work and if private sector entities require the certificate, the ministry would not be able to provide one.
He stated that those workplaces can make alternative arrangements for employees to get such a certificate but iterated that the ministry would not be issuing same for persons who were in home isolation.
He clarified that they will only be issuing discharge certificates for persons who have been hospitalized with COVID-19.
He said, “So I hope that this becomes clear to people and this rush that we have currently (ends) because a lot of the persons who showed up at Umana Yana were not there to be tested, they all wanted us to give them a discharge certificate so that they can return to work and that is clogging up the system.”
He noted that it clogs the system as workers would have to verify the records before a certificate could be issued and this would be difficult as there are now over 12,000 persons who are currently infected.
In addition to that, the minister stated that not everyone who shows up at a testing site would require a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) COVID-19 test and as such the ministry will now only conduct PCR tests for persons who are hospitalized and certain other categories.
“The ministry is now going to do PCR only for people who are hospitalized or persons who would come to one of the A&E or outpatient clinics and the clinicians there decide that this person needs a PCR or if somebody is working in a high-risk setting and requires a PCR then we will do the PCR and the other category of people is if at a physician’s discretion, they believe this person needs to do a PCR,” he said, while adding that the unlimited use of the PCR is not going to help anyone and as such these new guideline are being put in place.
Meanwhile, on the issue of testing, Dr. Anthony stated that he believes a number of people just want to be tested and many of them were most likely not exposed to the virus and for those that were exposed, they have not been following the guidelines as it relates to testing.
To this end, Anthony clarified that if a person has been exposed, they cannot go right away to be tested as none of the tests available (PCR or Antigen) will detect anything and as such tests may come back negative.
Dr. Anthony said, “there is a window period that you have to wait and most people are not observing that, so what is happening is people are coming and flocking to the site and when they get back the results obviously it’s going to be negative because it is within that window period when the test is not going to work. You have to wait.”
In the case of an antigen test, he noted that if persons believe that they were exposed, the best thing to do would be to quarantine and wait for five days and if they become symptomatic then they should get that test done. If this is done, he said, the large number of persons that has been showing up at testing sites would drop significantly.
For persons who have symptoms related to COVID-19, the minister stated that they can have a rapid test done and their status will be determined. If they are positive they would be required to isolate. In this case, he said that persons should isolate for at least seven days.
If on the fifth and sixth day of isolation they are asymptomatic, those persons can return to work on the seventh day.
