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Coronavirus

Drive-Thru COVID-19 Testing Center Now Open – Invite Only

Yesterday evening the first drive-thru COVID-19 testing center opened up to the public. Because there is currently a lockdown and because of the fact we only have one testing facility at the moment, you will need to be invited by the Ministry of Health to be tested.

According to the MOH they will randomly pick people for the large scale COVID-19 testing. People will be notified that they’ve been selected by SMS and an appointment date and time will be shared with them. You are then meant to apply for a curfew pass and head to the Jazeera Airways Park & Fly facility which has been converted to a testing center.

If you receive the message from the Ministry, you head there on the day scheduled and a swab test is performed on you. Your results are usually out within 48 hours. Once done from your test, your car is disinfected by the Fire Department on the way out.

The announcement was made on the MOH Instagram and twitter accounts last night only in Arabic. I was told the reason it was published only in Arabic is that it was only for Kuwaitis, but I’ve also heard this is for expats so not sure who is right.

Then there are two other issues, the first is what if you are picked but you don’t have a car? How do you get to the testing center? The other issue is if this is a mandatory test or not? Going by the comments on twitter there are a lot of people who believe they can’t be forced to be tested, so what happens to people who don’t show up to their appointments?

58 replies on “Drive-Thru COVID-19 Testing Center Now Open – Invite Only”

i don’t understand why people need to be 100% randomly selected. it would have made much more sense to allow people to apply for appointments, based on symptoms, number of people in household, occupation, etc. AND THEN select from the applications. apparently, the government wants to test people from all areas, all walks of life, etc, etc, but that makes no sense because virus spread is NOT 100% random!

people living alone who show no symptoms should not be tested. something like that is a huge waste of resources.

none of this makes any sense. i guess i can find comfort in familiarity.

I’m pretty sure you can go get checked when ever you like, just get an appointment. From what I read on the WHO a lot of people show no symptoms at all while a lot of people are in denial. Plus how do you know that everyone is willing to get tested? Do you work for the moh to know what is going on? Doing it at random is the best option, this way they can then see individuals that person has come into contact with to see where it may have come from and where it is going. If there are a large number of cases in a small 1 area but no known cases in another it doesn’t mean there aren’t any cases in the second area it just means no-one came forward.

I would think it’s so they can come up with a statistic of who is infected and who is not. Coming in if you’re symptomatic would skew their sampling.

All that’s out the window, and pretty shitty, if this is just for Kuwaitis.

I’m sure the reason is somewhere right there in Arabic.

They should check all front line workers, delivery boys, shop keepers, bachalors, who stay with sharing facility, Transport Drivers. Instead going all the way to AlJazira govt should arrange test block wise. Random check from 2, 3 people from each building.

If I’m not mistaken they can come to you or they will pick you up in a police car (or what ever car is available) and take you back home. They have these huge lorries that have all the equipment inside. I’m pretty sure it is mandatory, people on Twitter can cry all they like but this is a pandemic so that “my rights” thing doesn’t really work anymore and the gov has constitutional rights to do what ever it deems fit during these circumstances.

There’s a message going around saying that it’s not mandatory to get tested once you’re “invited”

Why don’t they just give all details and leave people behind lots of questions and confusions?
According to below link the test is not mandatory but…
***LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN. DO NOT SHARE FAKE NEWS, STOP BEING GULLIBLE AND BELIEVING EVERYTHING YOU READ***

How you know it is fake or not? This website is out there since 2016 and if it was publishing fake news it would shut down by Kuwaiti government long time ago.

Can you please stop it with your nonsense? Just because a site has been running since 2016 doesn’t mean they’re going to win a Pulitzer prize and based on what they’ve been publishing lately I wouldn’t be surprised if they not only get shutdown but probably arrested since the government is cracking down on people spreading fake news.

This is a flawed idea at so many levels.

1. What if the number at the back of my Civil ID is not updated?

2. A household may have more than one member, and its not necessary they all get selected on the same day. So if one guy has the driving license, is he supposed to accompany the other members as and when their ‘random’ draw happens? Are you not increasing vehicular traffic in the country exponentially on any given day?

3. What if the SMS goes to spam or is blocked? How will they ensure the recipient has seen it?

4. A majority of expats dont have cars. How will they go to this far off location given the non existent public transport?

5. Why not instead go area-by-area and do specific testing, rather than lottery based random testing like this?

Mark iOS already has that feature.

Settings > Message > Message Filtering

and turn on Filter Unknown Senders.

Your Welcome. 🙂

Interesting that you chose to reply on just a few points! Anyway:

1) they are going by area already and doing random testing

then what additional value will this MOH random testing bring to the table? Logistically, the drive-to-airport and lottery based selection is flawed! (reasons already outlined above)

2) what phone are you using that has a spam folder for SMS’s??
i sue two phones – an iPhone and an Android device. However, any modern smartphone has these features built-in these days. Android OS has greater flexibility too, especially some skins like MIUI/Oxygen etc. Else, as someone pointed out, you can install apps to augment the functionality. On iPhone, you can have iOS keep messages from unknown numbers in a separate folder.

You need to think a bit bigger.

This first drive thru is most likely a beta test and they’re starting the tests now with this lottery mechanism limited number of 180 a day so they can work out the kinks. That way once the lockdown is over they have fixed all the issues that might have come up and they can then expand and increase the number of testing centers.

Testing a random sample will show the foci of infection and help plan further testing better

Which areas should be tested first? Once you go through the obvious ones, it gets tricky how to proceed.

In a pandemic, time is crucial and delaying testing in an area that’s becoming a focus of infection even for a few days can lead to tens maybe hundreds of infections

So yeah, you might be surprised, but all those specialists in MOH know what they are doing. Sure there may be some mistakes, but that is happening everywhere

This is a pandemic we’ve never seen the like of nor were we prepared for, so give credit where credit is due, the MOH is doing one hell of a job

There is an article in the below link that’s enough to create a lot of panic with their check list on the test. Once you go through it, no person in their right mind would want to be tested.

***LINKED REMOVED BY ADMIN. NOT AN OFFICIAL SOURCE.***

Plus it’s clearly said that the person who drives you there will require a curfew permit.

The “check list” and the “not mandatory” seems to contradict one another. Do we go or not if we are called?

Uh…I am not going for sure after having read that checklist. That list is definitely panic inducing!

Mark, if it is the fake news are spreading is because of lack of enough information and details from authorities. As if they know what they want to do but they don’t know how to do it. They will go through procedures and details little by little using trial and error.

The website you linked to is sharing information that is being forwarded by Whatsapp and not information that is correct or shared by the government. This has nothing to do with lack of enough information, this is to do with spreading inaccurate information.

Just to give you an idea of how stupid the article you linked to is, a swap test takes around 2 days for the results to come out. Do you sleep in your car at the test center until the results come out? Just use a bit of logic please, come on.

Ive never heard of this newspaper and they dont have an address, i checked on 4 other websites and no one has that crap.

I still feel they should have started testin each and every Buldg, house , apts… if MOH had started testing in March by now i guess they would have covered 70% of Kuwait… and also this total lockdown came in a bit late…

They’re already driving into areas and testing people. But logistically it’s not possible to test every building and house in Kuwait.

There are over a thousand houses in rumaythia, possibility 2 thousand if not more it would take over a month just to test each and every house even if they worked 24/7 which isn’t possible. Then we go to Salmiya with 300K. This isn’t a computer game, you don’t just click a few buttons and get a notification saying “congratulations el presidente your population of 4.3 million people have been tested”. How many doctors and nurses do you think we have? And how do you know if the person you tested negative today might not get it tomorrow and spread it while you are too busy testing others? Jesus Christ people come back to reality how do you people live in this la la land without crashing back to earth.

Whats the point of testing 2 thousands houses in rumaythia, when the next day all of them are venerable to infection by going to supermarket/clinic/hospital, hell even the swab taker could infect them if he is an asymptomatic covid-19 carrier.

You only test the sick in order to determine if he needs to be treated in normal hospital ward or isolated covid ward.

Ok testing would not be possible of house to house right… don’t you think this lockdown came a bit too late… if this was total lockdown with 2 hrs walk time, then issuing curfew passes, issuing supermarkets appointments etc etc… better they could have this so called total lockdown initially when we had fewer cases… I guess we would not reach the figure wht we are today…

5k test a day is still pathetic… before they shared the testing numbers. I was under the impression that they where at least doing 10k. The poorest nations in the world are doing 10k+.

Which nation? If Indian or America is doing 10K for example while we’re doing 5K then we are doing a lot better than both of them. Kuwait is around 4 million people so you need to compare tests per capita.

Lol America is not doing 10k. They where averaging 157k daily in April. Not sure how i feel about taking per captia as a data point. The idea is to conduct as much testing as possible so you can isolate and stop the spread. Just looking at other gcc countries UAE passed its total 1 million test on 26 April. Saudi just announced they are gonna increase testing to 36k daily.

Kuwait in last 24 hours did less then 4k test and total test are just shy of quarter million. And they have been the strictest when it came to lockdown/curfew.

When i said that, i was just trying to open up a discussion point on why per capita is questionable data point and doest give a good picture on how a country is handling the virus. For example it doesn’t tell u the effective reproduction Rt. The virus spread rate within your communities. Today out of 3760 test 1058 where positive, thats almost 30%. The only way to know the extent and rate of the spread is to do as much testing as possible. Per captia doesn’t tell you jack shit, also it not a worldwide competition. Its just data point used to score political points.

Mark, We are not all dumb wits here, as u like to think. As a data engineer i would assume they would have taught me that. But i guess they relied on Prof.Mark to tell me data point is not an “Emotion”.

Also, i thought we are just sharing opinions here. You and me are not apart of the scientific community, and we are not policy makers either. We all are spectators here watching the show unfold. And hopefully have a civil debate along the way. I know the lockdown has been tough on all of us but there is no need to be condescending and cocky about it. Peace ✌🏼.

plz be quiet i feel like im losing iq points just reading yr comment . per capita is relevant since each countrys size is different if u dnt understand this then i cannot argue with stupidity and wont waste my time on u.

Well from some one who doesn’t own a car… I doubt these messages are going to go to just anybody… I think they will be targeted at certain areas & certain groups… May be even just Kuwaiti specific…

If the results take 48 hrs do you go home and wait for the results? I read somewhere they want you to take a back pack to the testing center with a month worth of clothes and toiletries in case you test positive. So which is it

Who would want to be tested if the testing kit is contaminated as per recent information. Its taking a risk for no reason. Its best only to test someone who shows symptoms.

The numbers are increasing and it does not make sense. Yes more people are being tested but the surge up does not make sense.

Whats the diffence between ebadge and curfew permit? And in ebadge itself there are 2 categories, individual and vehicle. What to choose when?

If they’re doing large scale random tests, why stop with swaps? Why not do antibodies tests? As I understand, swaps helps in understanding how spread is the virus. While antibodies is useful in knowing who can go to work.

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