Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam requests to rectify Covid-19 testing

Through preliminary assessment and experience of testing in some localities since the fourth outbreak of Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam directed localities to strengthen proactive epidemic prevention and control, thoroughly implement the "4 on-site" motto, especially testing capacity and organization.

In particular, it is necessary to conduct screening tests in the community (pooling samples for each group with appropriate frequency and scale), especially in medical facilities, markets, bus stations and crowded places and facilities; closely follow the situation, have solutions for tracing, isolating, and quickly and effectively isolating from the beginning.

20,000 people stand in line in the sun to get tested for Covid-19 in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Thanh Tung

There is a situation of returning wrong test results.

In particular, the Deputy Prime Minister emphasized the need to pay attention to directing testing work in case of disease spread, and to organize many sampling teams and many units to participate in sampling and testing.

“Absolutely avoid taking many samples but not synchronizing with other stages; inadequacies in recording names, recording sample codes and matching names after testing... leading to slow testing of samples, slow testing but returning test results, even returning incorrect results or not being able to return test results (in fact, some places have to destroy samples because they are taken too long to be tested)”, the Deputy Prime Minister noted.

The Deputy Prime Minister requested that as soon as the test results are available, full information must be provided to relevant localities to organize tracing.

The Ministry of Health reviews regulations and guidelines, amends, supplements, and provides training (if necessary) to improve testing efficiency. Urgently introduce new testing solutions to reduce testing time and costs.

The Ministry of Information and Communications has directed the urgent completion of software and information technology tools to support testing and tracing work, which have been assigned by the National Steering Committee; and put them into use soon to support localities to ensure consistency and efficiency.