The country has been experiencing unprecedented conditions in recent weeks due to the Omicron mutation. No one believed, nor was he able to predict, a few months ago, that Cyprus would record a four-digit number of cases. It is understood that due to the thousands of cases that are announced daily, so many thousands are the close contacts who are obliged to test and quarantine.
The sampling points of the Ministry of Health conduct free rapid tests on specific population groups. In recent days, their workload has more than doubled, resulting in huge queues and hours of suffering for both citizens and people working in the sampling centers.
A similar volume of work has fallen on the chemists who perform the pcr tests. At this stage the pcr test has been described by many as the "ideal" for detecting the Omicron mutation due to the more specialized sampling.
They do the test today and the result comes to them after 2 days
Complaints reached SigmaLive as well as on social media about the long delay in sending the PCR test result. In particular, citizens have complained about the fact that a particular Chemist promises PCR results within the day, however the result comes the next day with the result that some people even miss your flights to destinations that require PCR examination. Problems also arise with scheduled surgeries, which again require negative PCR.
According to the same complaints, the specific Chemistry, although it has the possibility of daily examination up to 2000 thousand tests, however, accepts to perform much more (up to 4000) and therefore can not respond in time to the issuance of results. In addition to the suffering and anxiety of the citizens, there is also the issue of the spread of the virus as the citizens do not know if they are positive or negative.
Other complaints refer to the prices of these tests. Note here that the ceiling set for PCR tests is 50 euros and 10 euros for rapid tests.
SigmaLive contacted the President of the Association of Clinical Laboratories, Haris Charilaou. Speaking to SigmaLive, Mr. Charilaou said that he had contacted the Ministry of Health about this issue. Mr. Charilaou estimates that the price of 50 euros is the lowest that could be entered for this test since, as he said, we must take into account the accuracy of the test as well as the various parameters that ensure the quality provided.
He said that the volume of samples taken by the laboratories in recent days is large and not all laboratories can cope. He stressed that Cyprus is the cheapest country to conduct PCR tests, while at the same time Mr. Charilaou explained the process required to conduct such a specialized test as this.
He also said that there should be a measure in general and that we should all be careful and avoid approaches such as a laboratory undertaking to do thousands of tests at prices lower than 50 euros and in the end not be able to cope. He also noted that people have routinely done a test which before covid was done in very individual cases. At this point he said that a laboratory that performs PCR test should have both properly trained staff and appropriate laboratories that check and identify results. As explained, the accreditation of laboratory tests is also being done.
Mr. Charilaou also stressed that we should not all become numbers, "positive, negative". The chemist must have the right time as he said, to communicate with the person, to report the results, maybe to make a "doublecheck" of the results and to have a generally human approach.