CDC's analysis of samples will determine is variant virus exists on Guam

Any day now we should have the results from 20 samples sent to the CDC to determine whether any of the COVID variants have breached our borders. Ten of the samples are from covid positives in the quarantine facility and ten from the community.

According to Public Health's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Felix Cabrera there are three possible scenarios:

1-the results from the genomic sequencing can all turn up negative

2-there could be a positive from the quarantine facility which would show that the protocols in place are working

The last possibility, he explained, was,

"The last one the one that we fear the most is that they find that its already in the community then that might change a lot of things here in terms of what we want to do but at the same time. If it is the community these are samples again from December and January, then and if it is found in the community then that means that even though it's been in the community then we've done a tremendous job at keeping it at bay. So that's how I would interpret that."

Dr. Cabrera says active discussions are underway on how they would respond if the samples show a positive for the variant on Guam. As we reported Public Health will routinely be sending samples to the CDC to conduct genomic sequencing to track whether the variant is on island.