RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Wanderson de Oliveira, the Ministry of Health’s surveillance secretary, said on Thursday that the country has a record of 127,000 cases waiting for tests to determine potential contamination by the novel coronavirus.
Despite the amount, according to him, there are enough tests available for this and next week.
These are patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Among them, there may be people infected with Covid-19 or other respiratory viruses.
“We’re distributing 320,000 test kits this week. We have 127,000 cases registered in our system for laboratory investigation. So, for this and next week, we have a significant slack,” he said.
In all, as of April 7th, 153,961 tests have been carried out on SARS patients to detect both Covid-19 and influenza as well as other respiratory viruses. Of that total, 62,985 were specific for Covid-19, with 13,700 positives, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
Brazil is expected to have 100,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the next two weeks. The updated data on Thursday showed 17,857 infections and 941 deaths.
The Ministry’s instruction is that only people hospitalized for SARS or who are in the so-called sentinel units in the health network should be tested.
“It is critical that these resources be well managed by state secretariats.Testing for SARS cases that are not hospitalized or are not carried out through sentinel surveillance is not required. If we run out of tests, we have no way to guarantee immediate supply,” the secretary said.
This testing criterion is the Ministry’s explanation for the 5.3 percent mortality rate of the novel virus in Brazil.
As only the most severe cases are submitted for more detailed investigation, the rate tends to be higher than in countries that extend testing to patients with mild symptoms.
“With this criterion, the trend is that mortality will remain at this level between four and five percent. It is the behavior in virtually all countries that have this method of testing. In those mass testing, even mild cases, obviously mortality tends to drop,” said João Gabbardo, the Ministry’s executive secretary.
Source: InfoMoney