Coronavirus: This is why hospitals and clinics in UAE do not test everyone for COVID-19

Dubai: As the COVID-19 pandemic results in panicked people around the world, many people say that they are turned back from hospitals and clinics without being tested for coronavirus.

Well, there is a reason for that because healthy people are not being encouraged to take the COVID-19 tests. There is a protocol to follow as the health authorities have set certain guidelines for a patient to qualify for coronavirus test.

Dr Ahmed Abdelhameed, Specialist Internal Medicine at the Medcare Women and Children Hospital in Dubai, told Gulf News that a patient should first meet the set criteria of being suspected case. “It means that any person who wishes to be tested for coronavirus should have respiratory symptoms with or without fever. He or she should have history of travel from one of the listed countries where they have local transmission of the disease in the last 14 days or history of close contact with coronavirus confirmed or highly suspected case.”

The test is done in a government hospital laboratory and the role of the private sector is to collect the sample and isolate the suspected case.

Usually it takes less than 24 hours to release the result but because of the dynamic continuous change of the situation and the high number of samples which are sent sometimes, it can take even longer time.

If the clinic or hospital decides to take the test, the patient is isolated and nasopharyngeal swab is collected by the designated team and patient will be admitted in the hospital in isolated room.

The hospital allows the patient to go home if the COVID-19 test report is negative. However, they are admitted to hospital and sent to isolation facility for treatment untile recovery.