You’d have heard about a certain “surveillance programme” by MOH. In fact, in MOH’s press release, you’d see this line every day: “We (MOH) will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme.”
Wait, what’s this surveillance programme you’ve been reading about? You know it’s a random test, but how random, and how many people have been found with COVID-19 with this random test?
And how does that work?
Well, the mystery has been solved. Kind of.
Random Tests Have Picked Up 13 COVID-19 Cases in S’pore in GPs & Polyclinics
According to CNA, MOH said that this is called a “sentinel surveillance programme”.
Oh man, it sounds even scarier le.
But you’ve no cause for concern; this is a common practice despite its scary name. In fact, WHO has a webpage dedicated to this: simply put, it’s a system whereby instead of getting data about the spread of a disease passively (i.e. waiting for suspects and testing them), it’s an active way to get more data.
The word “sentinel” actually has a different meaning in the medical world:
So yes, it’s not something that MOH invented when the COVID-19 outbreak happened.
In fact, MOH has been doing this programme since 2007, testing some patients with symptoms like fever and cough for common respiratory viruses including influenza viruses so as to gather data about, say…the common flu.
But what exactly did they do?
Basically, they routinely test samples collected from patients with influenza-like symptoms at general practitioner (GP) clinics and polyclinics for the coronavirus even if they’re not a suspect.
This would provide a way to see the spread of the disease in the community without having to wait and see.
And with this, they’ve managed to find 13 COVID-19 cases over three months.
Do note that it’s not mentioned whether this could be the “hidden reservoir” of patients that they’ve been talking about so far.
Under the programme, about 300 to 600 samples are tested monthly for the common respiratory viruses, including the common flu virus.
However, ever since COVID-19 first landed on our shore, this is extended to test for the coronavirus, too.
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As of 28 April 2020, 1,200 samples were tested, and 13 were tested positive for the coronavirus.
This means about 1% of the people who were sick with symptoms like fever and cough actually have COVID-19 even when they’re not a suspect.
Total Tests So Far: 140,000
Other than the sample tests, polyclinics and GPs are also testing patients with prolonged acute respiratory infection—that is, people who had a fever and their symptoms persisted for at least four days. Of the 5,800 tests, 130 tested positive for the coronavirus.
That’s like 2.2% of the patients.
All in all, about 140,000 tests have been done as of 27 April, though most of them are done for migrant workers, whereby thousands of tests are done daily.
You can watch this video on how tedious each test is:
And lest you’ve not been following the news, here’s one thing you need to know: more tests would be done, so don’t be surprised if you see more cases popping up.
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