Health Ministry’s COVID detection system at Amman centre breaks down — source

AMMAN — The Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 detection system at a centre in Amman broke down and “caused chaos” on Friday, depriving hundreds of potential patients from testing, according to a source.

There are only four COVID testing centres affiliated with the ministry that work on Fridays.

The Jordan Times was informed by an employee present during the instance, who preferred to remain anonymous, that staff left the site earlier Friday due to an occurring error at the ministry’s system.

According to officials at the Ministry of Health, it should take no longer than 48 hours after administering the test to inform potential patients with their results. 

However, The Jordan Times investigated the above statement, in which it took over 72 hours for the result to be released. After the ministry issued the result, The Jordan Times received another test labelled as “sample not clear”, therefore requiring another test in order to detect a result.

On a different note, activist Salam Basel said that since the Kingdom is still under defence orders, the government should oblige private insurance companies to cover COVID-19 costs. 

Basel stated that the pandemic has drastically impacted the world over the last couple of years, “yet insurance companies are withdrawing from their responsibilities, which includes the cost of the lab services as well as a doctor’s office fee, urgent care clinic charges, or the emergency room where the test is administered”, Basel told The Jordan Times.

Basel said that insurance companies should be required to fully cover the cost of COVID-19 testing, without any cost sharing with patients or prior authorisation requirements, for as long as there is a pandemic. 

“The delay in the results is causing chaos,” Diala Daoud, a working mother of three, told The Jordan Times.

Daoud had administered tests for herself and her three children, as their school refuses entry without a negative test result after recent infection. As a working parent, Daoud’s children must go to school when she is working.

“Thanks to the Ministry of Health, I will have to take a day off of work because my kids can’t go to school,” she added. 

“We are paying ridiculous prices for laboratory tests because the testing at the Ministry of Health is not efficient,” 27-year-old Nael Sultan told The Jordan Times. 

Sultan added that people are paying for tests, buying face masks and paying for medications and vitamins to protect themselves from COVID-19, yet insurance companies are not covering any of the above costs. 

“This is getting out of hand,” he continued, “we either adapt to the virus or have these costs covered by insurance companies”. 

“We’ve been living under these circumstances for over two years, yet the Ministry of Health is not prepared, and I personally think they never will be,” Sultan concluded. 

Despite multiple attempts to contact the Health Ministry for a comment, they have not provided The Jordan Times with a response.