More than 25,000 thousand people are being tested for Covid-19 daily, with significant delays to results and long appointment waiting lists.
Qatar has opened a new and much-needed laboratory at Hamad General Hospital to increase testing capacity for Covid-19, Hamad Medical Corporation [HMC] announced on Sunday.
The new lab aims to slash turn-over time for test results in the country after weeks of significant delays—a phenomenon that triggered frustration from the community over the past few weeks—due to overcrowding in testing facilities and a rise in Covid infections during the third wave.
“In recent weeks, like many countries around the world, we have experienced unprecedented demand for COVID-19 testing, due to the increase in cases driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant, in addition to the large number of travelers returning to Qatar in early January,” said Dr. Einas Al Kuwari, Chair of HMC’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.
“Our laboratory teams have been working 24-hours-a-day, 7 days a week, to process a record number of tests, reaching a peak of nearly 40,000 tests a day.”
The new facility, which is now the fourth laboratory for COVID-19 testing, has the capacity to process 5,000 to 6,000 tests a day, according to Qatar News Agency.
The addition is expected to help reduce delays in processing PCR tests significantly, particularly since Qatar began witnessing its third wave of Covid-19 infections.
Read more: Qatar’s PCR ‘crisis’, what is really happening?
Shorter Quarantine
Meanwhile, Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health [MOPH] has reduced the quarantine period for those who test positive from 10 days of mandatory isolation to only 7, QNA has reported.
In a newly updated guideline announced on Monday, authorities stated that those who test positive for Covid-19 after taking a test at one of the approved medical facilities will now only be eligible for 7 days sick leave, as opposed to 10 days previously.
However, after the quarantine period is over, these individuals will be required to take another antigen test at a medical facility authorized by the Ministry on the 7th day.
If the result is negative, the Ehteraz status will automatically turn green and the person will be free to return to work on day 8. However, if the test is negative, a further 3 day quarantine period is required, but no test is needed once that period is over.
The latest decision to reduce the quarantine period comes in line with the latest local and international clinical evidence showing that most people test negative by day 7 and pose little to no risk of transferring the virus, the ministry stated.
