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19 Mar 2020
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Ministry of Health
Provide Covid-19 test kits to GPs
The Government is to be commended for its efforts in containing the spread of Covid-19 .
The current practice for those who are sick is to wear a mask and see a doctor.
We have seen in many of the confirmed cases of Covid-19 that they visited general practitioners (GPs) (and/or hospitals) two to four times before they were given the test to confirm their infection.
This period can last a couple of weeks. During this period, they would have interacted with their family members, colleagues and friends.
Though the message is for them to stay at home, compliance is challenging because their symptoms may be mild and may fluctuate in some cases.
Contact tracing becomes very difficult once a test turns out positive for the virus because they would have come into contact with many people within the couple of weeks.
With the new Covid-19 test kit developed by the Home Team Science and Technology Agency and Veredus Laboratories that is able to give a result with 99 per cent accuracy in three hours, the Ministry of Health may want to consider providing this test kit to all our GPs (Quick test for travellers with symptoms on arrival in S'pore, March 6)
This way, the GPs on the front line will be able to screen the sick ahead of time.
The sick will stay at home for a day awaiting the result. Once confirmed to be positive, appropriate follow-up actions can then be implemented.
This may help to mitigate the spread of the virus in our community and cut down on the laborious task of contact tracing.
Ting Keng Soon
Source:
https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/provide-covid-19-test-kits-to-gps
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