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North West receives five mobile trucks for COVID-19 screening, testing

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The North West Health Department has received five mobile units for screening and testing of COVID-19. This is part of the national roll-out of the units, as recently announced by the Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize.

The ministry announced that about 60 mobile units will be rolled-out country wide.

Four of the mobile units will be dispatched to all the province’s districts. That means each district will receive one fully-equipped mobile unit.

In the video below, SABC News looks at the testing process:

The units were received by members of the provincial government led by MEC for Health Madoda Sambatha in Mocoseng village, in Mahikeng.

Sambatha says the advantage about the mobile units is that as when you detect the suspect on the ground, you immediately test them, and get the results in no time.

“Mass screening; you screen them on the basis of the questioner. When you screen and detect that this one might have travelled to countries that are infected or this one is a contact of the person who is positive, then you decide then that this one must go for testing. They test them taking swaps. When they test them results comes out in 45 minutes.”

Sambatha has also announced the statistics for the province’s confirmed COVID-19 cases.

“Statistics in the province, as announced by the Minister of Health, is that we have 11 in the province. These 11, it’s still one in Ngaka, and one in Dr Ruth. Two in Dr Kenneth Kaunda, which gives you four in three districts and then the seven is in Bojanala; which makes it to 11.”

The area manager for National Laboratory Services for the North West and Free State provinces Jone Mofokeng says they are ready to start testing people.

Meanwhile, the roll-out programme for screening and testing will commence at Motswedi village near Zeerust, where a 79-year-old woman from Botswana attended a funeral three weeks ago.

She was one of four Batswana to have contracted COVID-19 and has since passed on.

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