According to the epidemiological situation report released daily by the Directorate-General for Health, Portugal registered six cases imported from Angola.
"From the first moment we got in touch with this news, we started contacts through diplomatic and direct channels with the Portuguese health institutions and we are doing a joint work to clarify this situation", said Sílvia Lutucuta at a press conference in Luanda.
"We still don't have data, there is a deep work of epidemiological analysis of these cases that has to be done and will be done during the next few days," he added.
Sílvia Lutucuta announced that after the testing of passengers from Portugal on TAAG flights between 17 and 20 March was completed, the same procedure will be done with other airlines.
Among the passengers, only one tested positive, a citizen of Guinea-Conakry, residing in the neighborhood Hoji Ya Henda, in Luanda, and who is associated with local transmission cases already identified by health authorities.
Sílvia Lutucuta guaranteed that the testing capacity will increase, with three new diagnostic centers in Luanda, and that the objective is to expand to other parts of the country, including the provinces of Benguela, Huambo and Huíla, until the end of next week.
Asked about the number of tests that are done on average and the time needed to obtain the results, the minister noted that the method used, the RT-PCR, “is a complex test” that requires technical capacity and takes, on average, six hours to run.
The three test centers process an average of 90 samples per day, “but they can process more”, explaining that the time required to obtain the results also depends on the number of harvests in processing.
“With the pressure we have, we have already reached periods when we had 1500 samples to process. If we have an average capacity for three days, there are periods when it takes longer to give results, it can take 72 hours or more, but on average in 48 hours we have the results of our tests ”, he said.
