Clinics start swabbing for Covid

Reports by LULU MARK
URBAN clinics in the National Capital District (NCD) have started doing swabbing for Covid-19 testing, officials say.
When asked where people could go for free Covid-19 tests, Health Minister Jelta Wong said all NCD clinics including Gerehu Hospital had swabs for testing people with symptoms .
Symptomatic people are those who go to the health facilities with symptoms of the Covid-19 which include: cough, fever, shortness of breath, muscle pains, headache and loss of taste and smell.
Wong indicated that if it was for travel purposes then people could go to a private health facility.
St John Ambulance (SJA) chief executive officer and chairman of NCD public health committee Matthew Cannon told The National that currently the NCD clinics that were doing swabbing were Badili, Morata, Gordon, Pari and Tokarara.
“The other clinics are soon to start swabbing for the Covid-19 test”, he said.
He said the SJA led drive-thru testing which stopped on Monday, would resume next week and would be set up at Rita Flynn.
He said the public could go to the SJA drive-thru for swabbing and testing for free.
The samples would be sent to the Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL) and would take up to 30 days for the results to return.
However, he said if an individual wanted the results to return in 24 hours (for travel purposes) the samples would be sent to an authorised private laboratory and would cost a PNG citizen K650 and an expatriate K750.
He said if people wanted the team to do home test, the cost for would be K850.