The increase in confirmed and suspected cases of monkeypox in the country begins to overload laboratories referenced for the diagnosis of the disease. To avoid a lack of control over the spread of the virus, they ask the Ministry of Health to accredit more places for testing.
Experts warn that the low testing capacity hampers the identification of cases and, consequently, the control of the spread of the virus.
Today, the country has only four sites for testing suspected monkeypox samples. All are in the Southeast. The Adolfo Lutz Institute (in São Paulo), the Oswaldo Cruz Institute and the UFRJ (both in Rio de Janeiro) and the Ezequiel Dias Foundation (in Belo Horizonte) are part of the diagnostic reference network.
The Adolfo Lutz Institute is the one that concentrates most of the analyses. According to the State Department of Health, the unit has processed, on average, 200 samples per day, and 90% of them are released within 24 hours.
THE Sheet found that the time for releasing the results at the institute has increased as the demand for tests grows. A few weeks ago, all samples were processed in less than a day. In a note, the secretariat said that the unit has “full sample processing capacity”.
In addition to the increase in monkeypox cases, the institute also analyzes Covid exams, hence the risk of overloading the analysis.
Last Wednesday (27), the institute published an ordinance in which it establishes the regulations for the accreditation of public and private laboratories in the state that want to process samples from patients with suspected disease.
“Reference laboratories are experiencing an accumulation of demand, because they are dealing with two public health problems at the same time: Covid and monkeypox. If there is no recognition from the Ministry of Health for other laboratories to do the analysis, there may be a damming data”, says infectious disease specialist Marcos Boulos.
He recalls that the overload of reference laboratories has already occurred at other times, for example, in dengue outbreaks. On these occasions, other laboratories were accredited to carry out the testing and the reference units began to carry out the analyzes only by sampling.
Clarissa Damaso, a virologist at UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), says that the unit has also been overloaded in the last two weeks. The lab has been processing about 70 samples a day.
“It is a high volume for our capacity, since we are not a diagnostic laboratory, but a research laboratory”, he says. It also highlights the need for accreditation of more units for the analysis of samples.
Damaso also warns of the risk of a lack of reagents used for testing, as Brazil has been facing difficulties for months in importing medical supplies.
According to her, some manufacturers have given a period of up to 20 working days for the delivery of reagents used in the tests. “In addition to training more laboratories, the country may also face difficulties in purchasing supplies for testing. This lack is very dangerous for fighting the disease.”
Brazil recorded this Friday (29) the first death from smallpox of monkeys. According to the Ministry of Health, the country already has 1,066 confirmed cases of the disease. On July 9, there were 218.
The disease has been classified by the WHO (World Health Organization) as a public emergency of global concern. The entity has also declared that it considers the situation in Brazil for the disease as alarming.
For specialists, even though monkeypox has a lower transmission capacity than Covid, its control depends on the increase and capillarity of testing in the country.
“There are several examples that show us that even if the introduction of diseases can occur from large urban centers, the interiorization at some point inexorably occurs in some proportion. says Rodrigo Angerami, an infectious disease specialist at the Epidemiological Surveillance Center at Unicamp’s Hospital de Clínicas.
Asked about the accreditation of new laboratories and the difficulty in purchasing supplies for testing, the Ministry of Health did not respond.
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