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Senior Medical Officer of Health in the Ministry of Health and Wellness Dr Anton Best has sought to clarify COVID-19-related terms which have been causing confusion.
Best noted that people have been misinterpreting the terms community spread and local transmission and emphasised that they are different categories.
Best was speaking on Tuesday during a COVID-19 press conference which was also addressed by Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson – head of the Health Communications Team and Minister of Health Jeffrey Bostic.
He said the World Health Organisation has four categories for describing COVID-19 in a pandemic: No cases, sporadic cases, clusters and community transmission – also known as community spread.
January 12, 2021
A new Ministry of Health system is expected to make headway in clearing the large backlog of COVID-19 test results, starting from Tuesday, Senior Medical Officer of Health Dr Anton Best has declared.
In a COVID-19 update from Ilaro Court on Monday, Dr Best said a new four-tier system announced on Friday had begun in earnest on Monday, with results expecting to benefit from the new process as early as Tuesday.
Dr Best said: “We expect to see improvements right away. We have started the categorization process, where we have identified sites for the Category 1; Category 1 is the priority samples that we will be receiving, and those samples will be prioritized, and those samples will be out within 24 hours [after] being received by the lab.