The Provincial Health Authorities are not up to date with sending their COVID-19 data to the National Control Centre and that makes it hard for the controller to give accurate COVID-19 numbers.
This is the call from National Control Centre Deputy Incident Manager, Dr Melinda Susapu.
“We urge all the provinces who are collecting samples, please send your samples on time.”
“You need to send the Positive Case investigation forms so we can capture the data.”
“That includes the death certificates.”
“We don’t have to capacity at the provincial level to actually test using GeneXpert machines so you need to send the samples that we need for PCR testing.” “The turnaround time for those labs are quite efficient and we get the results back in 24-48hours.”
Dr Susapu also said that samples are sent for testing at PNGIMR in Goroka, Brisbane and Singapore.
She further added that there are a lot of recovery cases but the provinces are not sending data for the number of COVID-19 cases that they have, the numbers of cases in isolation whether in a facility or at home so they are able to give correct figures. “Hopefully by Thursday or Friday, we can get a correct figure so we can share with everyone.”
Meanwhile, the vaccination rollout began last Tuesday with priority given to health workers in the National Capital District. Western Province has the second highest number of case so they are being considered to receive the vaccine next after NCD.