Austria will launch a mass testing program for coronavirus in the first week of December and will test about 200,000 people in the first phase.
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Reported by The Local.
On Saturday, December 5, and Sunday, December 6, all teachers and kindergarten leaders will be tested. On December 7 and 8, 40 thousand police officers will be checked across the country.
Participation in testing is voluntary. It will take place at approximately 100 test stations that will be set up across the country.
The government has already ordered seven million tests for this program, of which four million were provided by Roche and three million by Siemens. The cost of the tests is 50 million euros.
I will use antigen testing for verification. Unlike PCR tests, antigen tests can give a result in less than half an hour. However, they are less accurate as they measure the surface proteins of Covid-19 particles.
This means that they are most effective for people who are highly infectious, that is, those with high viral loads. This means that, unlike PCR tests, there is a possibility that people with the virus could mistakenly get a negative test result.
As a reminder, Slovakia has carried out a nationwide testing campaign. During its first round, about 3.6 million people from 5.5 million population underwent antigen tests.
Overall, about 1% of test participants tested positive.
