Results from Ethiopia rejected globally
Covid 19 test results taken locally which is highly characterized by false positive and false negative continues to be rejected globally as this presents high risks to other countries.
A “positive” test means a person is infected with coronavirus, and a “negative” test means they aren’t infected. As the health officers suggested no test is 100 percent accurate, there will always be some people who test positive when they do not have the disease or test negative when they do have it.
As passengers from Ethiopia to abroad say many countries reject test result from Ethiopia even if it is negative as it is selected countries with lack of accurate test. Many of the heath officers in Ethiopia complain that most of the test kits in the country are gain from china which lacks credibility in their operation.
Dr Markos, Feleke CEO of Washington Medical center also share the idea of no test is accurate, the most important thing to know about the impact of false positives is as he argues the test result depend on the originality of the test equipment’s, “in this case at Washington we use the latest test kit which has certified from the us food and medicine authority” says Markos, adding that Washington is the only one which has three gene detect test kit which is certified from the US Food and Drug Authority. Though there are people who still complain the test result as they get positive when tested at Washington and negative from other medical center.
Adamu Tayachew, National COVID 19 Laboratory Section Chief said even if the false test result occur it didn’t support the idea of originality, rather as he said the government check the quality of all test kits before getting in to the country, but added “though sometime such kind of mistakes could happen for other reasons, and on the other side countries sets different test results depending on laboratory test kits.”
Furthermore, Adamu said the inclusion of the development and implementation of external quality assessment schemes and internal quality systems, such as automatic blinded replication of a small number of tests for performance monitoring to ensure false-positive and false-negative rates remain low, and to permit withdrawal of a malfunctioning test at the earliest possibility provided by the government for the testing centers.
As result of the test incurrence Ethiopian Airlines ban its flight from Addis Ababa to Shanghai Pudong for five weeks, the ban continues until at least January 1st, 2021 as Chinese authorities agreed to an extension as more passengers have tested positive for COVID-19.
In March 2, 2020 the first infected people found in the country testing capacity and therefore the rate of testing in Ethiopia and worldwide has continued to rise, more and more asymptomatic individuals have undergone testing.
Though the number of daily tests jumped from 0 on march to 5000 people on average on December; Even if efforts has been made to decrease low test sensitivity, false negative continue to pose much Consequential threat and hold priority since they have the power to cause devastating spread since the propagation of the epidemic especially by asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic patients remains high.
But false negatives are not the only errors bedeviling coronavirus diagnostics. False positives, which incorrectly identify a healthy person as infected by the virus, can have serious consequences as well, especially in places where the virus is scarce.
False positives are generally very rare among tests that have been vetted but any test can be plagued by contamination, mishandling or technical glitches, leading a device to spot the coronavirus where it is not. Although false positives may seem relatively harmless in comparison with their false-negative.
