Just five days after an additional test program in COVID-19 funded by the federal government on Oahu, about 1,000 people at the Kanoha test site have been told they will have to withdraw the test due to a misunderstanding.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell, Gov. David Igge and U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams announced Tuesday that up to 1,000 free trials will be offered in a single day over the next two weeks.
The idea behind the additional testing program, funded by the federal government, is to help officials in high-risk communities identify where the virus is so they can take steps to reduce positivity rates and ease hospitalization.
City spokesman Alexander Zanez told Star-Advertiser today that the Honolulu Fire Department did not receive proper guidance from eTrueNorth, which led to the test tube not being labeled at the Kaneohe test site.
Photos: Mass Covid-19 testing underway in Menoa
“Leeward Community College ledge location was labeled as guided by a person with past experience in PCR testing. The Kaneoh location was not made aware of this and was not labeled. The correct procedure was given after the fact, “Zanez said in an email.
Cladwell is a U.S. citizen, Zenes said. Surgeon General Jerome Adams and E-Truth North have been requested to allow Kaneho tests, as the person’s personal information is included in the kit, even if it was not on the test tube.
“The surgeon general is currently working on this,” he said.
Zenes said since the problem was discovered, the city has made sure the first initial, last name and place after the date of birth are placed on the test tube.
So far Zenes said 31,452 vouchers have been created for the testing program.
Lt. Gov. Josh Green said it remains to be seen if the misleading tests will still count.
“It would probably have been better if the mayor had come to the get-go on the same page with the Sir-General so that these tests would not be costly.” “I’m hearing that federal regulations may mean that those tests cannot be used.”
While some Oahu residents have praised the performance of the growth testing program, others have complained about unorganized test sites, long waits and heavy traffic.
On Wednesday, the first day of the test, some people flipped when officials had to keep the Kanioh District Park site closed for 30 to 45 minutes to reduce traffic and gridlocks after lines of vehicles lined up for miles.
The HHS has conducted surgery tests in eight states, none of which have similarly misunderstood issues, said Mia Palmieri Heck, director of external affairs at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. What happened in Honolulu.
Heck said the lab validates each patient’s information by looking at the information on the voucher and each sample that matches the patient’s information on the vial.
“Since there was no patient information on about 1,000 vials, the lab had to send a notice to each patient that a result had been reached. All the affected people were informed of the re-request, ”he said. “There were an additional 500 vials that had some patient identifiers on the vials and the lab was able to get that information along with the information on the voucher and process the samples.”
Leela quickly urged the mayor’s team to take the new test, which doesn’t have to wait long, anyone who was part of the batch.
He said the state must also commit to testing anyone who has found a false positive result in a state laboratory.
“We have no reports of individuals who have not been verified, indicating that they are positive,” Hack said in an email. Tomorrow (Monday) morning we will test this with the lab.
As of Saturday, Hack said there was an increase of 2,451 individuals in Honolulu who had received their tests. Of those, 27 – or just over 1 percent – returned positive and 2,424 were negative, he said.
However, Leela said that “some people reported that they got positive test results, but have not been tested yet – I would call it the ultimate false positive.”
Leela, meanwhile, said EJ has requested 30,000 additional tests after 60,000 before.
“I hope this test does not reduce confidence in the program. We don’t need to do more testing and tracing in our state, “he said. I think we need to test 10,000 people a day. “
