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Before the suspected of having Covid-19, the standard procedure is to go to a unit emergency or request medical-in-person or telemedicine time- where a health professional issues the necessary order to take the PCR test.
But now, and Through a new decree of the Undersecretariat of Healthcare Networks, it will no longer be a requirement, since the coronavirus detection test will be allowed “at the request of the interested party.”
As stated in the modification issued last Thursday, “It is instructed to comply with the regulations provided in the matter, and facilitate the performance of the PCR test, even in those cases in which it is required directly by the interested party, thus contributing to the early detection of this disease ”.
Next, the decree says that although patients may go directly to a medical center to request the test, Laboratories must notify the Health authority of their results, just as doctors do today on the Epivigila platform, which records all the information of suspicious and infected people.
Since the Covid-19 Advisory Council, the epidemiologist María Teresa Valenzuela comments that she agrees with lifting this barrier, especially now that cases are starting to rise. “At a time like this, when we have seen an increase in cases, putting obstacles in place for a patient to undergo the exam, I don’t think so,” he says.
Valenzuela, however, warns that this means that the laboratories notify the suspected case in a timely manner. “You have to make sure that the 159 laboratories in the network are connected to Epivigila, because there has to be a location of the case and its contacts in case it turns out positive. There must be a person who makes these notifications to the platform ”, he says.
This concern is also shared by infectologist at the University of Chile and vice president of the Chilean Society of Infectology (Sochinf), Claudia Cortés. “This modification facilitates access to the diagnosis, but the conflict remains as to who will be in charge of the notifications. Today it is the doctor who completes the Epivigila form. With this, when the person goes to the laboratory, who is monitoring the case has to be super-established ”, asserts the infectologist.
Luis Delpiano, president of the Society of Infectious Diseases, stated that this measure “brings more freedom and eventually more research. However, it is a medical indication test in general, that is not going to be lost, so anyone who goes with suggestive symptoms will still have a medical order. This opens up for the population that saves the doctor or that is not in a more complex situation “and he warned that” the important thing is that a high epidemiological notification is maintained, a high traceability index and that the examination continues to be taken in the centers qualified for it ”.
Regarding the modification, in the laboratories it is already projected how it will be implemented in order to comply with the notification to the Epivigila platform, task that currently falls to the doctor who had indicated the PCR.
Beatrice Herve, a microbiologist at the Clínica Las Condes laboratory, comments that the measure “favors testing, but we have to see what difficulties it has, because one of them may be notification. Another is the laboratory capacity, because it is not infinite. We have an agenda system and the demand this week has been progressively increasing ”.
The Dr. Erna Cona, head doctor of infection control at Indisa Clinic, states that “the doctor gives a folio number of Epivigila and Salud is notified that the patient will take a test. To speed up the search this seems good to me, but for the logistics of the notification it becomes more complex “.
