Random COVID-19 testing of the community should have been done sooner as the Senior physicians in the Country had suggested to the Ministry of Health since January this year.
Tautalatasi Dr. John Adams, a paediatrician, said the private clinics were given their rapid antigen tests last week Friday, and several of his patients seen in the clinic were tested positive.
In an interview with Radio Polynesia, the private physician said more tests conducted today at his clinic also revealed positive cases and this was what the private doctors were “concerned about”.
As of this morning, the Government says there are now 196 confirmed community cases including 15 imported cases of passengers that arrived in early March flight from New Zealand.
It’s evident the virus has been in the community long before Samoa recorded its first community case, but there was no way of telling until the tests were done.
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Tautalatasi was one of the frontliners during the measles epidemic two years ago said he does not want to see the same mistakes happen in Samoa again and agrees that home isolation is the way forward.
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Samoa Medical Association in January, appealed to the Government to consider undertaking more surveillance testing for COVID-19 in the community.
The Association, which represents most of Samoa’s doctors in public and private practice and has a membership of 110, made the appeal for more testing in a letter dated 29 January 2022 addressed to the Minister for Health Valasi Tafito Selesele.
The three-page correspondence was signed by the S.M.A. President Dr. Gogosinaepeleivaai Atropa Belladonna Potoi and copied to the Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers, the National Emergency Operations Centre (N.E.O.C.) Chairman and members, the Director-General for Health Leausa Dr Take Naseri and various other public officials including selected media.
Gogosina pointed to historical cases of medical emergencies in Samoa that resulted in fatalities, and made specific mention of the 1918 Spanish influenza that killed 20 percent of Samoa’s population at that time and the measles epidemic in 2019 that claimed the lives of at least 80 children.
