Yesterday's tests also confirmed 27 new cases from the Belize District and 23 from the Cayo District.
And that's why the Ministry of Health is rolling out rapid testing nationally. With more of this equipment recently donated, these tests - which take 20 to 25 minutes will now be deployed to the Northern Regional in Orange Walk and Cleopatra White in Belize City.
They will only be for persons who are symptomatic or close contacts of a confirmed case, Manzanero said the idea is to get COVID positive people out of long lines and into self isolation:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, DHS
"We are going to go ahead and use the SD biosensor as the approved rapid antigen test kit, we already started the levels of deployment to the regions. Training is happening today with Karl Heusner staff and the northern regional hospital staff and some of it has happened with the Cleo White central health region staff, so that these three entities will be the first ones to be doing rapid testing. We hope that what that will do is allow us to be able to give people a result in real time because when I was in Orange walk on Tuesday, you find out that people come, they get tested, they don't get their result, they really just walk out and go about doing their normal activities. They go out and buy their tacos and then they go catch the bus and maybe go drink a beer and all these things. I am not so sure that once you get a rapid test and give them a result, whether that will change but you are at least going to be able to tell people you have... you are positive."
Any person who is symptomatic or a close contact of an infected person must then go for a PCR test.
Approved SD Biosensor tests are also available at two private facilities.
