Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health is widely using coronavirus disease (COVID-19) active screening to contain the spread of the virus, as the number of infections reached 11,631 cases on Tuesday, Arab News reported.
The screening aims for early detection — over 150 field teams from the ministry are visiting areas, homes and residential buildings with suspected cases, and mass screen people as a precautionary measure.
The Saudi Health Minister Tawfiq Al-Rabiah said that the ministry had noticed an increase in the number of people infected with COVID-19 during the past three days due to active screening in crowded areas.
Dr. Fadwa Al-Ofi, an infectious diseases consultant, said: “By detecting these cases, we can isolate them and prevent the spread of infection to the community.”
She added that most positive cases were asymptomatic or only showed mild symptoms. “The target screening is done in high-risk areas that have a lot of cases, and crowded areas,” she said, mentioning that as of Sunday, 82 percent of cases had been identified through active screening.
According to the ministry’s spokesman, Dr. Mohammed Al-Abd Al-Aly, testing has proven effective in limiting the spread of COVID-19.
He noted that the duration of testing surveys in targeted neighborhoods ranged from days to weeks according to population density, number of housing units, residential interaction, and the number of cases discovered.
Over 200,000 tests have been carried out at the Ministry of Health’s laboratories and other leading institutions throughout the Kingdom.
According to Al-Abd Al-Aly, over 500,000 field medical evaluations have been conducted as part of the active screening, where teams carry out certain tests and evaluations to identify suspected cases. He stressed that all the laboratories involved in conducting the tests were accredited by the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
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