Opposition spokesman on health, Dr Morais Guy, has registered his concern over a lack of updated genome sampling by the Ministry of Health and Wellness to provide a current representation of the country’s coronavirus (COVID-19) rate.

The opposition spokesman’s concern comes after the Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton reported in Parliament on Tuesday, July 11, that “the last batches of genomic sequencing done on samples collected in March and April showed that its subvariants [Omicron] XBB.1.5 and BQ.1.1 were most prevalent” among Jamaicans who tested positive for COVID-19.

Genomic sequencing refers to the method of observing the genetic structure of an organism or cell type in the labatory.

Tufton’s statement follows his announcement that Jamaica has seen an increase in COVID-19 positivity.

Guy, in response to Tufton’s statement, argued that with the availability of genomic sequencing machines in the country, there should be a more current updates on the island’s COVID-19 situation.

“Minister, we have several genomic sampling machines in the country, we ought not to have reports that are stale dated from samples in March and April. We are in the month of June now, genomic sequencing takes no more than five days to get back the result. So, I would have expected the minister to come and tell the house that the latest genomic sequencing that we have at the ministry was for some time like last week or the week before,” he said.

Increase in Influenza-like hospitalization

With an increase in hospitalizations for patients with Influenza-like symptoms, Guy called for the health ministry to extend the opening hours of health centres to prevent overcrowding at hospitals.

” From reports coming out and in the media and the public domain, we hear that a lot of the cases that are seen at these hospitals are cases that could be treated at the health centres and we know the culture of Jamaicans who want to go to hospitals. Could the minister give an assurance to the country that in terms of dealing with this and putting pressure on the hospitals-that health centres can be opened for an extended period as has been done in the past to deal with the COVID-19 crisis,” Guy said.

READ: Tufton warns ‘COVID still present in Jamaica’

–Send feedback to [email protected]