Marruecos se prepara para generalizar las pruebas de detección de la COVID-19

Morocco intends to take another step in the fight against time to contain the expansion of COVID-19. After having decreed hard and fast measures of citizen confinement, the neighboring country wants - after one month and five days of the first case of coronavirus confirmed - to begin to practice massively the tests of detection of the pathogen. The aim is to break the epidemiological chain by identifying carriers of COVID-19 who are asymptomatic or who have mild symptoms in order to trace the course of the epidemic. In addition, from this Tuesday, Moroccan citizens will have to wear a mask to go out in the streets. 

Following the recent acquisition by the Moroccan authorities of tens of thousands of detection kits, the tests to be carried out will continue to be of the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) type, although government sources cited by the digital Le360 assure that they "work better and, above all, are faster than those carried out up to now by the laboratories". The number of people infected is expected to rise sharply in the coming days.

Last Saturday, 100,000 kits -some sources estimate the number at 200,000 units- arrived in Casablanca on two Royal Air Maroc (RAM) planes from South Korea to carry out the immunodiagnosis test, according to the digital Hespress, after the contract was signed by the Moroccan ambassador in South Korea and the company Osang Health Care. The Asian company will give Morocco 10,000 more kits, according to this media. Also, from Asia, in this case from China, a RAM plane arrived last Monday, March 24, with medical material destined to fight the epidemic following the telephone conversation held by the foreign ministers of the two countries, according to the website of the weekly Challenge. 
 

The tests will now also be carried out in the University Hospital Centre (CHU) network in order to increase the number of examinations. "From next week [this week] and at the latest on Wednesday, the CHU in Rabat, Fez and Casablanca will start testing for COVID-19, mainly through the new rapid test units," said the same government source quoted by Le360. 

Until now, detection tests have been carried out in only three places: The National Institute of Hygiene in Rabat (INH), the Pasteur Institute in Casablanca and the Laboratory of the Mohamed V military training hospital in Rabat. According to the director of the IHR's Department of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Amina Hansali, between the National Institute of Hygiene and the Pasteur Institute, between 200 and 300 tests are carried out every day. The coronavirus crisis is putting the Moroccan health system to the test and highlighting its limitations. 
 

According to the latest data from the Moroccan Ministry of Health, more than 5,000 tests have been carried out in the country, all of them PCR. These are the most reliable tests, but also the most expensive and slowest: 500 dirhams per test - equivalent to 50 euros - and between 4 and 5 hours - although in practice it takes longer - to know the results. With the new South Korean kits, the neighbouring country's authorities hope to speed up the procedure. 

The idea, according to the newspaper L'Économiste, is that, once the gearbox is working at full capacity, some 10,000 tests will be carried out every day. Private laboratories won't be part of the initiative for the time being.

Morocco wants to imitate the German model - the German health authorities complete up to 500,000 tests a week - and the South Korean model to put an end to the pandemic on its territory.  
 

The Moroccan authorities - in a joint statement issued by the Ministries of the Interior, Health, Economy and Industry - announced that from this Tuesday it’s ''obligatory'' to wear the mask for ''all persons authorized to leave their homes''.

The price of the mask is 80-dirham cents - about 8-euro cents - per unit thanks to a grant from the Special Fund for the Management of the Pandemic, launched by King Mohammed VI on 15 March. The communiqué states that all measures have been taken to facilitate the purchase of these masks. 
 

"To make these masks available and in line with the High Royal Instructions, the authorities have mobilised several industrialists to reinforce the rate of production," said the article in the daily Le Matin du Sahara et du Maghreb. 

Fines for not going out in the street wearing a mask range from "one month to three months in prison with a fine of 300 to 1,300 dirhams [between 30 and 130 euros] or one of the two penalties, without prejudice to the heaviest penalty", as stipulated in article 4 of law 2.20.292, the ministerial statement said. 

In the meantime, and before the number of tests begins to rise significantly, the epidemic continues its inexorable advance in the Maghreb country. At the time of this writing, there were 1,141 infections, 83 deaths and 88 recoveries. The Casablanca-Settat, Marrakech Safi and Rabat Salé Kenitra regions are the most affected.