According to the Billionaire, the amount of time it takes for test results to come back means they don't achieve the purpose for which they were carried out, which is timely isolation of the patient before the spread of the disease begins.
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Bill Gates describes coronavirus testing as “a complete waste”
While many countries across the world including Ghana have, and keep investing heavily in COVID-19 testing to separate infected persons for treatment, Bill Gates, the former CEO and founder of Microsoft has said that it is a complete waste.
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Bill Gates foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to treatment and vaccine research for Covid-19.
He said that people need to get results of their tests back sooner so that they're able to "change their behavior so they're not infecting other people."
"The simplest thing, which has to do with such insanity, is you should not reimburse somebody for getting a test that it takes more than 48 hours to get the result back," Gates said in an interview with CNBC.
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"That test is a complete waste. And to all these numbers about how much we test, the majority is just complete waste," he added, saying it is "insane" to have to pay for test results that could take more than three days and up to a full week.
Well, Bill Gates’ view does not appear to be far from the truth. Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, agrees with Bill Gates that testing needs to be improved.
"I started out by saying that we are never going to be happy with testing until we get turnaround times within 24 hours, and I would be happy with point-of-care testing everywhere. We are not there yet. We are doing everything we can to do that," Giroir told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union".
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