Venezuela's COVID-19 infections set to overwhelm testing capacity, says opposition adviser

Venezuela’s rate of infection of COVID-19 is set to overwhelm its testing capacity, likely leading to an artificial flattening of the contagion curve, a lawmaker and medical adviser to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said on Monday. However, legislator Jose Manuel Olivares, from Guaido’s pandemic advisory team, told an online media conference that authorities conduct just 600 to 800 tests a day and the results are delivered up to two weeks later. “We are reaching the point that the number of daily cases is going to be greater than the testing capacity ... and that is going to produce an artificial flattening” of the contagion curve, Olivares said. The apparent flattening “will generate a supposed calm” in the population and “the result will be the population’s greater exposure” to the virus, he added.