THE Governor’s Covid-19 Task Force and the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. will offer free Covid-19 community-based testing today, Friday, Nov. 12, at the former Mariana Resort from noon to 3 p.m.
Walk-ins will not be accepted.
In an earlier media briefing, Stephanie Kern-Allely, regional communicable disease epidemiologist of the Pacific Island Health Officers Association, said the CNMI had been able to regularly test roughly 1% of its eligible population.
Although this percentage may seem small, she said this shows impressive and excellent testing capacity.
“Testing 1% of our population [regularly] is pretty impressive numbers. …That’s already a pretty excellent testing capacity, and I know our team is always working towards improving our laboratory efforts all the time,” she said.
From Oct. 31 to Nov. 9, about 5,000 Covid-19 tests were conducted.
CHCC Chief Executive Officer Esther L. Muna, for her part, said there was no evidence of widespread community transmission, adding that this was based on reports from the contact tracing team, and the number of persons under investigation.
Kern-Allely concurred with this statement.
“We continue to look at the contact tracing report,” Muna said.
“That is our guide…to determine what’s out there, as well as to determine if there is a need to go out and [expand] community-based testing.”
CHCC chief of ancillary services Jesse Tudela said the CNMI is not running out of Covid-19 test kits and recently received a restock of supplies.
He noted that together with the Covid-19 task force, CHCC has been testing people in the CNMI since the early part of last year, and this includes border testing for incoming flights or ships as well as South Korean visitors who arrive through the travel bubble program between the two jurisdictions.
In addition, the antigen Covid-19 testing has been conducted at schools on a quarterly basis, with the first round of school-based testing taking place at the beginning of the new school year.
A number of positive community cases were identified through school-based testing.
On Thursday, the CNMI reported 12 new Covid-19 cases and one active hospitalization. This is a patient receiving care at CHCC for underlying medical conditions unrelated to Covid-19, Variety learned.
Patients receiving care at the alternate care site in Kanoa Resort are not considered hospitalized.
To register for school-based or community-based testing, visit https://covidtesting.chcc.health. No code is required to register. If no testing dates appear on the website, this indicates that all testing slots have been filled.
CHCC highly encourages residents to register for initial Covid-19 vaccinations or booster shots, if they have not already done so.
To register for vaccination, visit www.vaccinatecnmi.com, call the CHCC call center at (670) 682-SHOT (7468), or register in person.
To view the new CNMI Covid-19 dashboard, visit https://chcc.datadriven.health/covid19 (updates next business day).
