An independent, adversarial news site in Halifax, NS
Jason LeBlanc
Here is my interview with Jason LeBlanc, the director of Virology, Immunology and Molecular Microbiology at the Nova Scotia Health Authority.
My apologies for the audio quality; I’m not trained in audio, and I’m learning as I go along with substandard equipment. But I think this interview is important all the same.
[…] positive. There has yet to be any — proven — community transmission in Nova Scotia, but in a recent interview with the Halifax Examiner’s Tim Bousquet, Jason LeBlanc, director of Virology, Immunology and Molecular Microbiology at the […]
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I do feel this guy is somewhat contradicting the World Health Organization directive of ‘test,test,test’ as much as you can. True someone asymptomatic can test negative even though they have it, but they can also test positive as the Italian town of Vo experiment proved. So you can’t test everyone, but test as many as possible, especially those who have a lot of contact with others such as health care workers. It could just take one person missed to cause a community spread.
He does a good job of explaining exactly why we don’t “test, test, test” Testing doesn’t stop the spread. Following social guidelines contains the spread. Health care workers have access to personal protective equipment like gloves and hand washing stations to contain contact. This is similar to the yearly testing of Influenza. If you are not in a high risk group, you need to go home, rest and recover and leave the medical resources for the populations that need them.
Testing, followed by isolating the positive resuts does stop the spread and I believe this is what was don in Vo, the Italian town who tested everyone. I think the truth about not testing everyone is the shortage of testing kits – which were/are made in Italy!