COVID-19 Spokesman: Confirmation Comes After Numerous Tests
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16 March 2020 10:52 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Director General of Disease Prevention and Control (P2P) of the Health Ministry, Achmad Yurianto confirms that the government continues to conduct follow-up tests on patients that have tested negative for coronavirus (COVID-19).
“In a number of cases, we conducted tests from two to three times before they came back positive for COVID-19,” said Achmad who is also the official COVID-19 spokesman at the presidential palace on Friday.
His explanation comes as a clarification of why the status of one case in Cianjur became coronavirus-positive after the patient’s death.
The patient in Cianjur died on March 3 and was declared negative for coronavirus. The patient was initially treated at a hospital in Bekasi after a series of lab tests declared the person negative for the virus.
However, the patient passed-away as the test on the second specimen began. The test result itself was only known 2-3 days after. “There is a process in the [COVID-19 tests] and it isn’t just a single test that immediately produces results.”
DEWI NURITA
