Morocco’s Health Minister Defends COVID-19 Testing Accuracy Amid Concerns

"It is common to get different results on various samples taken from the same patient over consecutive days," the Ministry of Health said. The same source explains that "this is related to the amount of virus in the samples, the behavior and development of the virus in the human body and the method of sampling the samples".

For this reason, recovery is only declared after obtaining two negative samples taken at an interval of at least 24 hours, the ministry specifies. If the same patient presents even a single positive result among several negative results, the positive result is always favored and the patient is considered a confirmed case, the press release continues.

The declaration of a case of contamination "is a medical matter within the competence of doctors, who base themselves on clinical, laboratory and radiological data to diagnose the disease; and no one has the right to disrupt the work of Moroccan doctors, virologists and all health personnel," the ministry stresses.

The department of Khalid Ait Taleb calls on the Moroccan population "not to give credit to these vain attempts to undermine its confidence in its health system and its personnel who are on the front line in the fight against coronavirus".