Chief Medical Officer Dr. Simone Keizer Beache, during a recent media conference, in response to a question from a journalist, explained why PCR positives and Antigen positive are separated in the COVID-19 reports that are put out by the Health Services Subcommittee.
“We reporting locally, regionally, and internationally—international as in WHO/PAHO—and regional as in CARPHA. They only document PCR laboratory confirmed COVID-19 test results, that’s your PCR tests, and so in order to avoid any sort of confusions/ discrepancies—and generally you know other people look at our releases to determine what’s happening, so in order to avoid that sort of discrepancy in terms of adding the Antigen to the PCR and reporting that as one, we ensure that we keep the PCR separate in our reporting, because those are the figures we submit to WHO, CARPHA, and the other agencies; and then we put the antigen as a separate notation”. The CMO said.
Dr. Keizer Beache however noted that the Ministry of Health in terms of policy, planning and response, considers both antigen and PCR tests when thinking of their interventions.
