Madagascar: Covid-19 screening tests in the capital

Text by: Laetitia Bezain Follow

After the measures taken ten days ago, including confinement in the capital and in Tamatave, a port city in the east of the country, the authorities are moving into high gear. They decided to start rapid screening of the population and disinfection in certain districts of Antananarivo, the capital.

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From our correspondent in Antananarivo

Dressed in white coveralls, glasses, masks and gloves, four teams of ten doctors, biologists and staff from the Ministry of Health received residents of the overcrowded area of ​​Bekiraro Isotry and the surrounding area to carry out rapid diagnostic tests . “ Many people came. We have tested several hundred people. We have placed ourselves at the level of the dwellings where there have been positive cases in recent days, ”explains Dr Ephraim Randrianambinina, member of one of the mobile teams.

The objective: to get ahead of the virus, specifies Lamina Rakotonjanabelo, director of cabinet at the Ministry of Public Health. " It is an option to try to screen as many people as possible but oriented towards the presence of confirmed indigenous cases in certain neighborhoods because if there are cases of contagion, it would be primarily around these cases. It is according to this that we will decide to go to screen an entire neighborhood to cut the chain of transmission and to detect the most infected cases so that we can isolate them immediately. This required several teams gathered in certain places in the districts where we erected tents to receive people. "

Of the 322 tests carried out in the districts of Antananarivo, none is positive. But the coronavirus epidemic continues to progress on the Big Island. In total, 70 people are affected by Covid-19, a dozen of them are contact cases, that is to say that they have never left Malagasy territory. Cases that are mostly found in the capital but also in the provinces. As in Fianarantsoa, ​​400 km from the capital, where six contact cases were detected. The city is placed in partial containment, said the head of state yesterday evening on national television.

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• Madagascar
• Coronavirus
• Health and Medicine

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