As it moves towards embracing the use of self-administered COVID-19 tests, the Ministry of Health and Wellness says those results will not be included in the national COVID-19 figures.

Portfolio minister Dr Christopher Tufton explained at a parliamentary joint select committee on the novel coronavirus pandemic late last week that the Government’s decision to allow self-testing is in keeping with how technologies around COVID-19 screening have evolved over the past two years.

“The home tests have become more common globally as part of screening or monitoring, and it is evolving in a sort of mainstream way for various purposes. What we are trying to do is to introduce this concept to the population [but] not for surveillance purposes. We will remain with the tested, tried, and proven technologies of surveillance, but we do recognise that there are some environments, whether in the home, the workplace, or special events where home test will serve as a compliment to the other systems that we have,” he outlined.

Dr Tufton, who is chair of the committee, stressed that, in order not to compromise any assessments of the status of the virus in the population, it is important to keep those results out of the national surveillance numbers, given issues such as the larger margins for error and risk of manipulation of results by some people.

“What we should not do is to ignore the emerging technologies that could add some value to the process of the COVID response. We just need to recognise the pitfalls and the advantages and manage in terms of the education and advice that we provide,” he said.

Meanwhile, Opposition spokesman on health Dr Morais Guy lamented that there is a skew in the national testing numbers as the majority of travellers do antigen tests for that purpose, but those figures are not properly included in the surveillance numbers.

“We are not capturing all of it. Twenty-five flights leave Jamaica every day from Montego Bay. Assuming 100 persons per aircraft, you’re looking at 2,500 persons. Seventeen flights are leaving Norman Manley [airport] today, if you do the math you’re looking at 1,700, that’s 4,250 at minimum — we are not getting the numbers from the airport. If we did, your positivity rate would fall. It’s something that needs to be looked at, we are not getting those numbers sufficiently,” he argued, pointing out that the private labs are not feeding the results into the system on a timely basis.

He noted that the vast majority of travellers opt for antigen tests, except for those from Canada and Cayman as those countries require polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.

“What will happen is that if you get a thousand results today for PCR, it gives the impression, when you calculate the positivity rate, that it is low, whereas if you had gotten them on the days that they were done you would get a different result, so we’re not really calculating it properly, per day,” he said.

Dunstan Bryan, permanent secretary in the ministry, acknowledged that tests done in private labs are not necessarily included in the calculation of the positivity rate for the day, and that the ministry doesn’t have control over the timeliness of result reports from the labs.

“It’s difficult to do that. What you find is that the surveillance team calibrate the information to reflect the timeline that they have, so the numbers are calibrated based on the dates that we receive the results,” Bryan said.

Dr Guy argued that the algorithm would therefore be flawed if the correct numbers are not given for each day. But Dr Tufton explained that, while test results for tourists are not captured as part of national surveillance, the daily numbers over time links all relevant COVID-19 statistics, confirming that the surveillance is accurate within margins of error for appropriate levels of planning and response.

“That doesn’t take away from your point that we can enhance the process, [but] there is a formula around how the rates are determined, and it has its genesis in the accuracy of the PCR as opposed to the antigen,” he stated.