The Health ministry has admitted lapses in Covid-19 test results and have now developed strategies to address the rising cases of inconsistencies in results being released by laboratories it has accredited.
The ministry, however, asks those who have or will test positive for Covid-19 to take precautionary measures to curb the spread of the disease.
The ministry says some people claim to have received two different result slips, one indicating positive and the other negative, yet others claim to have taken two different samples on the same day, but returning different results.
The inconsistencies in Covid-19 test results can be traced back to June 11 when President Museveni, in his address, accused Makerere University laboratory for faking Covid-19 test results.
“Some of the 679 confirmed cases were classified as positive (for Covid-19) when they are not by a laboratory in Makerere because they were careless. Apparently, there were a few people working there and probably got tired,” he said.
The inconsistencies in Covid-19 test results mean some people have been served false positive Covid-19 results and wrongly started on treatment.
It also means those who are truly positive have been given false negative results and left to blend freely with the community and continue transmitting the virus.
A number of people have come out to refute the Covid-19 test results from the ministry, with the most notable being the family of the 80-year-old woman from Kampala, who passed away on July 25, and that of the family of Dr David Katuntu from Kamuli District
Other concerns have also been about missing and delayed Covid-19 test results. Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the Health minister, while speaking in Kampala on Friday, said the ministry is receiving more complaints about the discrepancies in Covid-19 test results.
“Some people claim to have received two different result slips, one indicating positive and the other negative. Others claim to have taken two different samples on the same day and these give different results,” she said.
Dr Aceng said the differences in results “may arise from the sampling technique and the number of samples taken.”
The Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) is in charge of quality assurance of Covid-19 testing and it assesses laboratories in the country before allowing them to conduct Covid-19 testing.
Prof Pontiano Kaleebu, the director of UVRI, said the way technicians take off a swab from the nose or throat for testing can give variation in results.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard, at a minimum, respiratory material should be collected from the nose or the deeper areas of the throat.
“We are also dealing with a virus that is multiplying so sometimes you see that if the test is done apart in terms of time, in the initial test, the virus may not be detectable but later it is detectable,” Prof Kaleebu said.
“It could also happen that towards the end in the acute stage, the initial test can be positive because the virus is still growing and in the second test, it is negative because the virus has disappeared,” he added.
The UVRI director also said they are still struggling with the results that are on the borderline.
“We are also learning, we have noted a few individuals who are hard to declare positive or negative. The individuals have a low virus in their body, their result is on the borderline positive and for others, the test shows borderline negative,” he said.