Belizeans arriving will now be required to quarantine at a hotel for one night while that PCR test is being processed. Originally, they were to wait some hours at the airport while this was done. But, it turns out, that solution is not practical, Manzanero explained why, and what's the change:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
"In terms of what's happening at the airport, we were particularly looking at doing the Gene Expert because that gives you four tests every 30 minutes. But when you go back and look at how practical that is going to be, if you have a plane load of 120 people arriving on Saturday, you can take 8 per hour, so how long is that going to take? So that is why you notice the change that BTB made is, ok, we are now going to go back and tell people you will need 24 hours before you get your PCR, all arriving Belizeans as of August 15th. It's not going to be any longer waiting at the airport for your PCR, because that's assuming your run is going to go smoothly. Because if the run fails you have to re-do it. And so that's the best case scenario: four samples every 30 minutes, it's not practical, so we have changed that protocol."
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