According to a senior Health Ministry official, there are approximately ten thousand people in Israel suspected of being infected with COVID-19, whose tests have either been lost or had been delayed for more than a week on their way to being processed in labs, rendering them irrelevant, Channel 12 News reported on Monday night.
According to the report, the official relied on data obtained from Israeli healthcare providers.
The official elaborated that the reason so many tests had been lost or delayed along the way is the large amount of bureaucracy involved from the moment of testing until an answer is given to the patient.
During the first stage, MDA collects samples from the suspected patients, then transfers them to one of the Health Ministry's labs to be tested. Afterwards, the laboratory passes the test results on to the Health Ministry, from which the result is passed on to the healthcare provider - and they eventually update the patient.
On Sunday, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced that they have developed a new method of testing for COVID-19 which is not only 4-10 times faster than the tests most commonly used today, but also significantly cheaper, while supplying the same level of accuracy.
Moreover, most of the materials required to perform the new test are already available in Israel, easing significantly both the country's dire shortage of testing materials and its heavy economic dependence on foreign commercial markets.
The tests have already gone through a successful trial run at Hadassah Medical Center and officially went into circulation on Sunday, a move which is expected to ease future bureaucratic mix-ups and delays in testing.