Pointless Covid-19 testing has become a public health threat as the Omicron variant continues to deliver a wave of mild cases, a group of Western Cape doctors said on Tuesday.
Calling for monitoring to be switched “away from cases towards hospitalisations”, the medics said attempts to meet the demand for tests as SA’s fourth wave of infections surges are “deeply damaging to all other primary healthcare services”.
The doctors, most of whom also work in the health sciences faculty at the University of Cape Town, said testing people with symptoms came at a cost to other health services during previous waves “when severe Covid-19 threatened to overwhelm acute hospital services”. The doctors said only 6% of Covid-19 patients admitted to Western Cape hospitals during the fourth wave had been tested at primary healthcare facilities.
Outpatient Covid-19 testing does not decrease community transmission, nor does it offer any benefit to individual clinical management, aside from a definitive diagnosis “Outpatient Covid-19 testing does not decrease community transmission, nor does it offer any benefit to individual clinical management, aside from a definitive diagnosis.”
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