The Ministry of Health announced today a series of new rules regarding testing for the Coronavirus, expanding the types of people who are tested for a possible infection with the new dangerous virus, and below you have all the details.
The Ministry of Health is making this change regarding the rules regarding testing for the Coronavirus because the testing capacity in Romania has also increased, so that more tests can be done every day for people who until now were not considered to be a priority for testing.
"The Ministry of Health has approved the increase in the number of people tested
Nelu Tătaru, the Minister of Health, today approved the proposal of the Commission for the Clinical and Epidemiological Management of COVID-19 regarding the modification of the testing algorithm for COVID-19, as well as the case definition.
Given that, currently, Romania has passed into another epidemiological phase, the epidemiologists, infectious disease, intensive care and emergency medicine specialists from the Ministry of Health Commission have established the inclusion in the testing priorities for COVID-19 of some categories of patients at high risk of severe forms and death.
"Until this moment we have taken a series of restrictive measures with the aim of limiting the transmission of the infection and reducing the number of severe forms and deaths. There are measures that we continue to maintain, I mean here social distancing, isolation, quarantine, etc. But, considering the evolution of the number of deaths, it is necessary to additionally apply infection detection measures to categories of patients who can develop severe forms of illness, in order to intervene with medical treatment as early as possible", he declared the Minister of Health, Nelu Tătaru.
Thus, testing was approved, additionally, for:
- Patients before the transplant procedure (asymptomatic) and donors of organs, tissues and hematopoietic stem cells before donation; hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients under immunosuppressive treatment, before each admission in the post-transplant monitoring period — 2 tests 24 hours apart.
- Asymptomatic patients with disease-related or drug-induced immunosuppression on admission to hospital — 2 tests 24 hours apart.
- Asymptomatic cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy — 2 times a month.
- Asymptomatic oncological patients before operative interventions or invasive maneuvers.
- Symptomatic hemodialysis.
- Asymptomatic hemodialyzed contacts with a confirmed case, 2 tests, 6-7 days apart; during this period they will be dialyzed in separate sessions from the rest of the patients
- Asymptomatic pregnant women who were in quarantine/isolation at home or were in close contact with a confirmed case.
- Care staff in nursing homes — 2 times a month.
It was also decided that health units can establish testing protocols by RT-PCR techniques, additionally, for asymptomatic health personnel in direct contact with a confirmed case, on the 6-7th day after the last possible infectious contact, which can be carried out with their own resources in the laboratories they own or in other laboratories."
