Africa-Press – Namibia. THE Namibia Airport Company on Monday commissioned a Covid-19 testing facility at Hosea Kutako International Airport (HKIA).
Technology and Trinity Health have set up the facility and will operate it for five years. NAC’s spokesperson Dan Kamati said the mantra that “Covid travels and crosses borders with people” is now a confirmed fact.
“As a result, we have seen several countries imposing complete international travel bans from time to time, justifiably or not, but certainly out of an abundance of caution, to minimise importation of the virus into their territories or countries ” Kamati said.
He said the fast-emerging global standard is thus that testing be done on both inbound and outbound travellers, at all points of entry into the country, including international airports, such as our Hosea Kutako International Airport. Even for inbound travellers, the testing is being made mandatory.
However, for that to happen, the airports and other points of entry (land or sea ports) should themselves have these facilities to make it easy for travellers to test before they fly out, or if required by law or out of expediency (eg. a sick patient on arrival or one with expired PCR results).
He said as part of the measures to reduce the potential importation of the virus into the country, NAC floated a tender to set up the Covid PCR testing facility at the HKIA early this year.
Following a competitive bidding or tender process, the successful bidder, a partnership between Profile Technology and Trinity Health, has successfully established the state-of-the- art testing facility which has now been registered and certified by the Ministry of Health and Social Services, he said.
Kamati said the facility is equipped and capacitated to perform Covid testing on air travellers leaving or arriving into the country through the international airport as a port of entry connected to our source international markets (i.e. Germany and Britian and the rest of Europe as well as the USA).
This will be guided by the current regulations and will be effective as from 21 December 2021. According to the service provider, the facility has capacity to test over 3 000 tests per day and can easily scale capacity in tandem with demand. The results are available within 120 minutes from the time of swabbing. The facility is situated next to the long-term parking at HKIA.
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