Helping their clients to avoid long queues in laboratories is the main objective of the island’s hotel establishments whose facilities will host taking samples for PCR tests and the carrying out of antigen tests on their guests. This is explained by Asunción Sánchez Ochoa, Director General of Training and Accreditation of the Balearic Ministry of Health. The Govern does not know how many hotel establishments in the Pitiusas are offering this possibility to their guests.
“They contact an authorized center,” says the director general, who points out that all those who are accredited by the Balearic Ministry of Health can be found in a document that is updated regularly and can be downloaded directly from the website of the Ministry itself. There are currently fifteen clinics, laboratories or medical centres that can perform these tests in the Pitiusas, twelve of them in Ibiza, spread over practically all municipalities (Sant Josep is the only one that does not have any) and the remaining three in Formentera. It should be noted that last Friday the City Council of Santa Eulalia halted activity in one of those operating in the municipality.
The Balearic Health Councillor, Patricia Gómez, said on Friday that she was unaware of the problem, as well as the number of tests that had been carried out so far and whether they were valid. “The General Directorate of Accreditation will review this situation, of which we were not aware,” she said.
Agreements with laboratories
Sánchez Ochoa explains that given the requirement to have negative tests to travel, clinics and medical centers, both primary care and specialized (cardiologists, podiatrists…) have requested accreditation to be able to carry them out. These centres have professionals who can perform antigen tests and, in the event that it is necessary to perform a PCR, they can contact laboratories to carry them out. In the accreditation process, says the head of the Regional Ministry, the local councils do not intervene, they only grant the license to the premises in which the tests are carried out.
The Balearic Ministry of Health is categorical. These establishments can test their guests, only them. In other words, what they cannot do is offer to do tests and PCRs to anyone who requests them in order to avoid the queues that can be seen these days at the doors of the laboratories that do them.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.