Local health authorities are preparing to use city parks and gardens as venues for nucleic acid testing (NAT).
During yesterday’s daily press briefing of the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Center, the local coordinator of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Leong Iek Hou, explained that this idea stems from the need to stop using the high number of NAT stations located in school facilities, while also keeping the stations close to the residential areas for convenience.
“At the moment we are preparing to establish new outdoor NAT stations. This is to prepare for upcoming works regarding NAT [venues]. We are currently working with many schools, but after the schools resume in September, we need to stop using them and so we need to find other places,” Leong said. Leong added, “The idea is to set up stations near the residents’ homes and parks or gardens are suitable and convenient for people to do their tests, as we need to continue to do NATs for some time to ensure that there are no other [Covid-19] outbreaks.”
The solution seems to have been inspired by other cities on the mainland where it is common to see tents installed in public outdoor venues for NAT.
Questioned on how many of these outdoor NAT stations would be installed and their operations, Leong refused to provide details at present, stating that further information will be provided subsequently at the right time.
“As for the number of stations and the operations, and whether it will be paid or free of charge, we will publish all these details soon,” she remarked, adding, “The [outdoor stations] are not going to totally replace the others. At the moment, we have 59 stations, but step-by-step we will replace some as we will need to reinforce the works of key groups and we need to have this option. Our idea is to continue to have some of those located in indoor places and add some more outdoors.”
RAT kits acquired via public tender, quality tested
To an inquiry on the topic, the medical director of the Conde de São Januário Hospital Center, Lei Wai Seng, has said that all the Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kits being distributed by the authorities have been acquired through a public tender. The price, stock availability and quality were the main assessment criteria that formed the basis of the decision of which RAT brands to acquire.
“We have acquired different brands of RAT via a public tender. We have performed a few tests before distributing the test kits to the population. If the products did not meet the quality requirements, we did not choose them,” Lei said. Further, Lei added, “We have been distributing a large quantity of RATs to the population so it is normal that some might have some problems. When we decided which ones to acquire, we also took into account whether the suppliers had enough stock and whether they could restock easily. Price, stock, and quality were the main criteria for the acquisition.”
Regarding reported cases of tests being flawed, Lei said that the Health Bureau has been following up these cases and the feedback obtained from the population to determine which kit brands or types were having more issues to avoid acquiring more of those in the future.
