Health Ministry: COVID-19 swab testing contamination clarification

Published :

5/10/2020 18:29|

The kits and swabs used to test COVID-19 are safe and have not been exposed to any contamination that may affect their testing accuracy, said the Director of Laboratories at the Ministry of Health, Asia al-Adwan on Monday.

The Ministry of Health published a statement following allegations made by the President of the Jordanian Society of Genetic Engineers, claiming that the Ministry’s tests are contaminated with coronavirus, and this is the reason for the increase in infections. Al-Adwan denied these claims and the reasoning is as follows:

If the examination kits were contaminated with the virus, all the results of the tests would be positive. The majority of tests that are conducted on a daily basis and have recently exceeded 20,000 negative results.
Factories supplying test kits to Jordan are the same that the Ministry of Health has been dealing with since the beginning of the pandemic. If such contamination was present at the source, the infections would have been high from the outset, noting that the numbers were low in earlier stages.
Procedures of how samples are taken, adhere to global health protocols, confirmed al-Adwan.

False allegations against the accuracy and safety of the COVID-19 tests are baseless as they are not based on evidence and go against Defense Order No. 8, al-Adwan added.

Al-Adwan said that there are medical safety measures in place to ensure the safety of all testing kits, their transport, storage and use, and that the Ministry is keen to import PCR kits from the best global suppliers.