The government has committed to scale up COVID-19 surveillance and testing despite the country recording zero new COVID-19 infections in the past week.
Commenting on the latest trend yesterday, the Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr Obadiah Moyo said they have not confirmed any new cases of COVID-19 in the last seven days but that does not mean the government should relax, a local publication has confirmed.
“The trend does not give Government an opportunity to relax, instead they will continue with more surveillance and testing.
“We have received a lot of questions as to why we have not been getting any positives in the last seven days or so. This is the picture which is coming up, but it does not necessarily mean that we are over the disease in Zimbabwe.
“It is possible that we might be able to get more positives so the issue is we are not going to be relaxing because we have been getting negatives. We have to be much more serious and we have to make sure that we continue applying the measures that will stop Covid-19,” added Dr Moyo.
The Government is engaging with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to develop guidelines on recommended test kits and their use.
Dr Moyo said for diagnostics, the country will be using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which is the gold standard.
“The rapid test kits are not going to be used for diagnosis of Covid-19 because they have to be validated and they are not for patient management. They are strictly for the purposes of epidemiological survey and nothing else.
“For diagnosis purposes, we have the PCR platforms, which we have been using all along and all our results have been based on the PCR diagnostic platform,” said Dr Moyo.
Moyo said those concerned about the use of rapid test kits must not worry because rapid testing was just for epidemiological survey.
“RDTs that we might have to use must be fully validated and no one should come and use any rapid test kits. We are talking with the WHO to give us those guidelines and also from China who have been using these rapid test kits,” said Dr Moyo.
