Mass testing on Koh Rong yields 16 positive cases
About 550 people were tested for COVID-19 on Koh Rong Saturday morning, with 16 people testing positive.
According to a resident of the island located off of the coast of Sihanoukville, those staying on the getaway island were informed of the test only a few days before.
The 16 positive cases were confirmed by the Koh Rong Military Base’s Facebook page, and the 16 patients ranged in age from four to 51.
The logistics of Mass testing on Koh Rong
While authorities did their best to keep the giant crowd organised, the resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said it clearly presented a danger because of the amount of people packed in so closely together.
The testing took place outside Smile Resort in Koh Touch village with the resort used as the holding area. Long queues stretched down the street, leading to a pre-test area where social distancing was enforced.
“Regardless of social distancing, getting this many people in one place is dangerous in an area without a hospital,” the resident said.
He added that after six confirmed cases were reported last week, it created a panic on the island.
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Information was gathered by authorities late last week and numbers handed out from one to 500. He said everyone he spoke to was told to arrive at the location at 8am.
He added that there was only one holding area for the apporixamately 500 people being tested, with many of the people waiting in the sun for over an hour on Saturday.
”I can see they are trying to control it, but too many people in one place at one time,” he said.
The whole event lasted about an hour and a half, with “huge amounts of people being roughly separated as best as cops could.”
He said while the organisers had initally planned on four holding areas, in the end only one was used.
A wider outbreak?
”I just hope this gathering doesn’t have a ripple effect with more cases in a week. My main issue is the amount of people in one place, I’m unsure of the amount of positive cases,” he said.
He added that the patients had been quarantined and believed they were to be taken to the mainland. Most of the positive cases were children, he said.
The longtime Koh Rong resident said he had received unconfirmed reports that another round of testing would take place in two weeks.
Reaction of Koh Rong residents
Gloria Terreur, a Koh Rong resident who moved from Koh Rong Sanloem about three months ago, said panic started settling into the community last week when the Koh Touch village chief tested positive.
She said soon after a rumor surfaced that the village chief tested positive, two more positive cases were reported before six were reported on Friday.
Officials knocked on her door at her guesthouse on Saturday morning, she reported, after she failed to show at the testing site by 8am, but she wasn’t willing to go to what she described as a “possible COVID superspreader event”.
“They were supposed to have everyone come in waves, but everybody came at the same time,” she said.
“There were 500 plus people in the same palace at the same time with no social distancing, there were no gaps between people.”
This was disputed by the resident, who said social distancing was in fact in place during the testing.
She said the officials were helpful and allowed her and her sister to wait for about an hour until social distancing could be maintained at the testing site near Smile Resort in Koh Touch.
The operation was poorly organized, she added, and it appeared the officials weren’t trained in how to properly manage the testing of such a large group of people.
“Either they didn’t know the rules or they just didn’t abide by them,” she said.
The confusion continued after the tests, and she said there has been no clear instructions as to what is expected of the island’s residents moving forward.
“There are no clear instructions about what we are allowed to do, we don’t know anything about that because nobody informs us,” she said.
Terreur said she and her sister, who both tested negative, were kicked out of an establishment Saturday evening before curfew while they were cooking dinner with two friends, something she said she didn’t believe was breaking any rules in place.
Testing on Koh Rong – who tested positive?
Four of those who tested positive were between the ages of four and six, one was ten years old, six were between the ages of 17 and 35, and the remaining five were 35 and older.
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