Nationwide door-to-door testing for COVID-19 is not being considered by the Ministry of Health (M.O.H.) with “self-testing and self-reporting” the Ministry’s preference.

That is the view of the Acting Director General of Health, Tagaloa Dr Robert Thomsen when he responded to a question from the Samoa Observer, during a virtual press conference on Saturday.

He said the country currently has over 200,000 COVID-19 test kits to do more community testing among the general population.

"We have more than 200,000 testing kits at the moment which have been distributed to all the district hospitals across the country and to the Ministry of Police and Fire and Emergency Service Authority (F.E.S.A.) so they can respond to a few calls from members of the public,” Tagaloa said. "They have also been trained on how to conduct the tests so they can do self testing and report it to the Ministry.”

As to whether the M.O.H. will do door-to-door testing for COVID-19 by visiting all households in the country, the senior health official said that is not under consideration. 

"Door-to-door testing is not something we are considering," he said. "I don't think we should take that path but the Ministry is preparing for ways in which we can do self testing and self reporting. 

"This can enable our people to do tests on their own and have prepared pamphlets with guidelines to assist them with testing and reporting it to the ministry for records. 

"Self reporting is something we want to encourage so people who are doing tests at home can report the results of their tests to the Ministry. 

"It's vital that they inform the Ministry when they do testing at home so we can know or see if the number of positive cases is moving up or down from time to time."

Tagaloa also warned against “unnecessary testing” and emphasised that people should not take the test if they know they were not exposed to the virus.

"There is no need to test yourself if you know that you were not exposed to the virus,” Tagaloa said. “You should only get tested if you think that you have a high chance of contracting the virus by coming into close contact with someone who has been tested positive or if you develop symptoms of the virus. 

"But there is no need for you to get tested everyday, the only people who are encouraged to get tested frequently are our frontline workers, who are at the forefront meeting with a lot of people on a daily basis.

"We have more than $200,000 testing kits at the moment, however, if we are looking at enforcing self testing we would need more testing kits."