Health
1. (a) What is the rationale behind the provincial government’s new criteria for COVID-19 testing in the Cape metropolitan area and (b) what will be the impact of these new testing criteria on the number of tests conducted in the Cape metropolitan area;
2. whether this new strategy increases the risk of infection and death as carriers of the virus will remain untested or be tested late; if not, why not; if so, what mitigation measures are being put in place;
3. what is the number of testing kits that were available in the province as at 1 June 2020?
1. The Western Cape Testing criteria were changed at the end of May, due to the fact that we could not be assured of the continuous availability of test kits in the Western Cape. The Western Cape Government has taken the important decision to only test those who are at highest risk and most vulnerable of dying from Covid-19 infection in the Cape Town Metropolitan area. This was to preserve our testing capacity. This also allowed to get test results back from these vulnerable groups quickly so that we can ensure speedy interventions to save lives. This was our top priority.
This decision follows confirmation that the backlog of tests from the Western Cape at the National Health Laboratory Service grew to 27 000 at the time. We understand that other provinces are experiencing similar backlogs.
b) the impact of this decision was that there was a rapid decline in the number of samples collected (from around 20 000 around mid-May to around 12 000 towards the end of the first week in June) during this time which meant that we could prioritise the vulnerable and ensure a good turn around time for results to patients.
2. The Health Strategy is aligned to the risk stratified case management approach (where we target those at greater risk), in areas with established community transmission and focus our combined efforts in these targeted areas to protect vulnerable people who are at high risk, and to prevent deaths.
3. On the 1 June there was a total of 25 000 kits available from NHLS, but there was a mismatch between the projected demand and the consistent supply of test kits.
