Covid-19 Testing

The German Federal Government is expected to start paying for rapid tests starting next week, as part of the latest pandemic plan agreed to late Wednesday between Chancellor Angela Merkel and 16 state leaders to moving Germany out of lockdown.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn announced on Twitter the government had secured at least 200 million self-tests and 800 million rapid tests, of which 150 million are already in stock with suppliers.

"Opening schools without rapid tests will drive up the incidence rate," Karl Lauterbach, a Bundestag deputy for the Social Democrats (SPD) and an epidemiologist, wrote on Twitter.

German Health Minister Spahn wants to expand the national testing strategy and massively extend testing.

From 1 March, all citizens will be able to be tested free of charge by trained personnel with rapid antigen tests. They are now sufficiently available on the market, according to Spahn. The municipalities can commission their test centers or pharmacies with such offers.

Both the drugmaker Roche and the United Kingdom have assured that diagnostic tests used to detect Covid-19 were able to detect the new mutant strain. Roche is conducting further tests its rapid antibody test and will share their findings "as soon as these indications have concluded".

The Austrian government has announced that it will start mass testing its population on December 2, starting with the capital Vienna, followed by six other states. In Vienna, a total of 1.2 million tests will be provided at three major locations with the support of the Federal Armed Forces. Appointments can be made online and Health City Councillor Peter Hacker (SPÖ) predicts a total of 150.000 daily tests.

Austria is planning to begin Covid-19 mass testing on December 5th, starting with teachers, police forces and communities with high infection rates. Seven million tests have been ordered so far and the government has mobilized both armed forces and forces to help with testing.

According to health minister Rudolf Anschober, the decisive factor is "that the tests do not create a false sense of security, but that they are accepted not as a substitute but as an additional measure to social distancing, masks and proper hygiene.

Slovakia has started mass testing its entire population for Covid-19, the first country to do so. During a trial phase on the weekend of October 23-25, a total of 140,945 people participated and 5,594 infectious cases were detected, defence ministry spokeswoman Martina Koval Kakascikova said.

The Chinese city of Qingdao will be testing all of its 9 million citizens following the discovery of 12 cases linked to a hospital, including six asymptomatic infections. All of the city's citizens will be tested within 5 days, so the National Health Commission.

In a pilot scheme four trained sniffer dogs have started working at Helsinki airport to detect Covid-19 infected passengers.

During preliminary university tests the dogs were able to identify the virus with almost 100% accuracy, even days before patients developed symptoms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reversed their testing guidelines Friday, which previously stated that asymptomatic people who were in contact with an infected person "do not necessarily need a test."

The update now states that "due to the significance of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission, this guidance further reinforces the need to test asymptomatic persons, including close contacts of a person with documented SARS-CoV-2 infection."

The CDC recommends testing for "all close contacts of persons with SARS-CoV-2 infection" as it is "important that contacts of individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection be quickly identified and tested."

Germany has increased the number of conducted Covid-19 tests over the past weeks, partly due to compulsory testing of returning travelers from risk areas.

According to data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in calendar week 31 a total of 578,000 Covid-19 tests had been conducted, in calendar week 32 the number had gotten up to 875,000 Covid-19 tests.

Out of the 250 registered laboratories that process Covid-19 tests, 41 laboratories had mentioned delivery problems for reagents.

According to the RKI, some products are highly dependent on individual manufacturers. In addition consumables, and reagents are only stored for short periods of time in the laboratories, among other reasons because of limited shelf life.

A saliva-based Covid-19 test developed by the Yale University and funded by the National Basketball Association and the National Basketball Players Association has gotten emergency authorization by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

The new salvia test from Yale University only costs around $4, compared to $60 in the best cased for the competing salvia test that has been developed at Rutgers University lap. Both tests have been granted the same permission by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Health Minister of the state Bavaria and the President of the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety have announced that out of 85,000 Covid-19 tests around 44,000 results haven't been communicated to the tested people.

Among these results are 900 positives ones. According to Bavarian Health Minister Melanie Huml "there is a transmission problem, there's nothing to gloss over" as most of the data needs the be entered manually into the systems.

She stated that is has top priority to inform the people that have testes positive and that they should be informed by noon tomorrow. Currently, the wait for test results takes often a week or longer.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) announced late Thursday that he had tested negative for Covid-19, after initially testing positive shortly before he was scheduled to meet President Trump in Cleveland. The positive result came from an antigen test, which brings faster results but is believed to be less reliable. The second test was a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which delivered a negative result.

"In a second COVID-19 test administered today in Columbus, Governor Mike DeWine has tested negative for COVID-19. First Lady Fran DeWine and staff members have also all tested negative," Gov. DeWine announced on Twitter.

As of Wednesday, Florida has reported over 500,000 Covid-19 cases since March, and the state's death toll has surpassed 7,700. Governor Ron DeSantis announced Monday that the state would try to speed up testing by implementing "symptomatic testing lanes" at testing sites aimed specifically at people with Covid-19 symptoms who should get their results in 2-3 days.

Berlin airports began large scale and free Covid-19 testing on Wednesday. The Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company (FBB), the Charité and the Berlin Senate planned that returnees from high-risk areas could be tested as soon as they land on the German capital.

Passengers with a negative coronavirus test result will not be required to go into the 14 days domestic quarantine.

According to the Austrian Ministry of Health a 14-day home quarantine will be mandatory after visiting or coming from a risk area, even if a negative Covid-19 test result can be shown.

The ministry stated that "the possibility of using the 14-day home quarantine instead of a PCR test will no longer exist for entries from countries with entry restrictions". Austrian citizens and people living in Austria can in "justified exceptional cases" undergo a Covid-19 test within 48 hours of arriving in Austria, all others need to present a test result at the border which is less than 72 hours old.

The final official regulation text and the list of areas classified as risk areas is still due to be published by the ministry.

The Brazilian Ministry of Health published Tuesday an ordinance stating every Covid-19 test in the country should be notified within 24 hours. According to the WHO Brazil is underreporting its cases of the new coronavirus and the new ordinance aims to get a more accurate overview of the outbreak.

The new rule applies to public, private and university laboratories. The ordinance provides for notification of any result, whether positive, negative, or inconclusive and does not depend on the methodology used.

The hospital owner Mohammad Shahed has been detained by the Bangladesian police as he tried fleeing to India over allegations that clinics in Uttara and Mirpur issued certificates for negative Covid-19 results without testing the patients.

According to police spokesman Colonel Ashique Billah that had talked to AFP Shahed's "hospitals carried out 10,500 coronavirus tests, out of which 4,200 were genuine and the rest, 6,300 test reports, were given without conducting tests". Over a dozen people have been arrested following the allegations of fake test results.

On July 2 the world has reached another milestone in the Covid-19 pandemic. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, 200,000 people have been reportedly tested positive for Covid-19 in a single day. Currently, over 4,3 million active cases are reported worldwide.

On Thursday, C.D.C. director Dr Robert Redfield warned that the numbers of Covid-19 infections are most likely to be 10 times higher than the official numbers of 2.3 million, basing these assumptions on recent antibody test results.

"Now that serology tests are available, which test for antibodies, the estimates we have right now show about 10 times more people have antibodies in the jurisdictions tested than had documented infections," so Redfield.