The state-level Covid crisis coordination (GECKO) will continue to shed light on current issues today, including the testing strategy. After the day before, both Salzburg’s governor Wilfried Haslauer and the Upper Austrian deputy governor Christine Haberlander (both ÖVP) had spoken out in favor of allowing the unsupervised “living room” antigen self-tests again, the Ministry of Health referred to the APA request GECKO Panel.
“Today, GECKO will deal with current issues, including the subject of ‘testing’,” said the office of Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein (Greens).
Upper Austria and Salzburg want to go back to living room tests
Haslauer and Haberlander had called for the self-test to be re-authorised. Haslauer said GECKO should recognize these again, at least as an emergency program. This was justified by the fact that experts from the state of Salzburg expect that the PCR test strategy will reach its limits in view of the high number of new infections from the end of next week. Results can then no longer be transmitted in a reasonable time.
In a letter to Mückstein, Haberlander demanded that the rapid antigen tests “for personal use” be recognized again as 3-G proof at the workplace and that they be given out to the public free of charge in pharmacies. You are “in the middle of the omicron wave”, and that also has an impact on the test and laboratory capacities. She referred to other countries that had also changed their testing strategy.
Experts also question strategy
In the days before, well-known physicians such as the virologist Elisabeth Puchhammer-Stöckl and the infectiologist Günter Weiss had questioned the broad testing as a whole. Major General Thomas Starlinger, who sits on the GECKO testing subgroup, said Thursday evening that they would be forced to focus on certain areas and also resort to antigen tests.
In Vienna, on the other hand, City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker (SPÖ) made it clear on Wednesday that the broad range of PCR tests would continue to be available. The tests give people security, and he would not dream of taking away this security from people, he stressed. The Tyrolean state government also said on Thursday that they wanted to stick to the large-scale tests.
Despite glitches: Further PCR school tests planned for Monday
Despite the current technical problems, the Ministry of Education under ÖVP Minister Martin Polaschek is sticking to the plan to use the more sensitive PCR tests twice a week in all schools from Monday. “The bidding consortium has promised to solve the problems by next week,” said the ministry to the APA.
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