18 Apr 2020

 Community testing for COVID-19 is expected to start on April 20, having been agreed upon a month ago.

Director of Health Services, Dr Malaki Tshipayagae, said in an interview that the community testing initiative was expected to start in Gaborone, Francistown, Ghanzi, Kasane and Maun, with a likelihood of being rolled out to other districts.

Dr Tshipayagae said the selected areas for the initiative were major tourist attractions.

Dr Tshipayagae said the Ministry of Health and Wellness would engage enumerators, nurses, doctors and other personnel to undertake contact tracing, adding that they would largely depend on enumerators from Statistics Botswana to help with sampling.

He said the team would sample households in a number of locations in respective towns and villages.

“Two things will be happening during community testing. There is the actual testing and contact tracing, which will be done by Maryland School of Medicine health team (that has been in the country conducting Botswana AIDS Impact Survey),” he said. ENDS