More than 2.5 million Slovaks took swab tests on Saturday, with 25,850 testing positive
Nearly half of Slovakia’s entire population took Covid-19 swabs on Saturday, the first day of a two-day nationwide testing drive the government hopes will help reverse a surge in infections without a hard lockdown.
The scheme, a first for a country of Slovakia’s size, is being watched by other nations looking for ways to slow the virus spread and avoid overwhelming their health systems.
The defence minister, Jaroslav Naď said on Sunday 2.58 million Slovaks had taken a test on Saturday, and 25,850 or 1% tested positive and had to go into quarantine.
The EU country has a population 5.5 million and aims to test as many people as possible, except for children under 10.
More than 40,000 medics and support teams of soldiers, police, administrative workers and volunteers staffed about 5,000 sites to administer the antigen swab tests. The testing was free and voluntary, but the government has said it will impose a lockdown on those who do not participate, including a ban on going to work.
The prime minister, Igor Matovič, apologised for putting pressure on people to take part, but said the requirement was justified. “Freedom must go together with responsibility toward those who ... are the weakest among us, oncology patients, old people, people with other diseases,” he told a news conference.
Slovakia had relatively few cases in the spring and summer after swiftly imposing restrictions. But infections have soared in recent weeks, raising concerns the country may follow the Czech Republic, which has the highest two-week death rate in Europe.
The scheme has faced opposition from some experts who doubted it made sense as an one-off measure, or pointed to the antigen tests used, which are less accurate than the laboratory PCR tests and may thus return more false negatives and false positives.
The government is planning a second round of testing next weekend.
On Sunday, Slovakia reported 2,282 new cases through PCR tests, putting the total at 59,946, not including those identified in the nationwide scheme, and 219 deaths to date.
yesilovethis on November 1st, 2020 at 17:56 UTC »
I almost read “tested” as “tested positive”...
zizalka on November 1st, 2020 at 17:26 UTC »
There were about 4900 testing state places, aproximately copying the poolling places usually with 8 people (2 doctors/nurses/paramedics taking swabs, 2 other medical profesionals/pharmaciests/vets/laborants/ processing the tests, one soldier, one policeman or firefighter and about 2 administrative workers and some voulenteers). One place avaragely dealt with 60 people/hour, some places asked the inhabitants to come by the alphabet or house numbers, however it was just a recomendation and every person could come to whatever the place they have choosen at any time.
A lot of responsibility was delegated to the cities and villages, the mayors had to organise the places where the testing would take place, administrative workforce, food and PPE for them. A lot of them were creative. The testing took place in buses, one person entered the bus, filled the form, continued to the medic who took the swab and got out of the bus by the other door to wat for results, other places were military tents on the outside, or some were inside in the schools, theatres, some were drive ins, but they did not work as well as planed. Drive in with big capacity at airport was good, however some mayors had them close to city centers and there were big rows of cars, the waiting time was long and people were causing congested streets, even some army vehicles delivering tests and certificates got stuck in them. Some of the cities and village even contacted the medical staff because army did not provide enough. They did not recieved the money they invested so far but the gouverment promises to send them.
The government bought the tests (antigen tests from nasal swabs detecting virus protein, that can be evalueted after 20 min, less accurate than pcr, however though to detect a lot of infectious people with high viral load) and printed the certificates of positivity/negativity that were filled in by hand after the test to avoid technical problems. The army distributed the test, certificates, water, and medical stuff (military doctors, 33 austrian army doctors, 200 hungarian medics, and a huge amount of medical stuff who voulentarlly called the army informing them they want to help, they were promised 7e/ hour plus 500e if they took the whole weekend shift) and operatively dealt with the problems occured. The biggest problem was to find medical stuff, but in the end people wanted to help, all respect to them, being from 7 to 22 in PPE, whole weekend when in the week they have a hard work in hospitals, clinics, ... There was also a posibility for companies with more than 4000 people and hospitals and other medical facilities to test their employes, their families and patients on their own, providing only one soldier and tests and certificates, companies had to organise places and find medical stuff.
Also PCR tests from Thursday-Sunday are accepted. It is interesting how it affected the numbers. People who wanted to have more accurate tests or did not want to get tested by state paid for the pcr test and the percentage of positivity declined from 20% to 10% on these days. Last week there was a lock down (you could work, shop in groceries and pharmacy and do a sport outside in your region) to stop the spread and to minimalise the contact between people so there wont be many new infections the test will not capture.
Without the negative test you have to quarantee yourself for 10 days (you can go out to the nearest pharmacy, groceries, doctor and that is it, you can not go to the work and wont recieve money for 10 days if your presence there is required, you can stay on home office if your boss allows it). With negative test next week you can go to work, all different types of shops and dine outside. Last week there was a pilot testing in the most infected regions, so they were tested twice already, the resulst are interesting. Last week Bardejov positivity rate was 3,52%, this week so far it is 1,29 %. It is still not decided if the whole country will be tested again next weekend, the plan is to catch the people who did not have the infection fully developed last week so the test did not recognise them. They want to test at least the regions with higher percentage of infected.
I felt safe during the testing, the people kept the distance, people were mostly waiting patiently and the stuff was friendly, policemen were walking past the quees and taking older people and parents with small children to the front of the que.
The biggest problems were the uncertainity before the testing about enough stuff, big quees on Saturday morning, it got a lot better on Sunday and the fact, that the government have not done some validation with pcr tests and even though they are giving an emphasis on the fact, that even though you are negative on the certificate you can still be infectious and should not start partying, many people may change their mind set and the borders are mostly open.
xopranaut on November 1st, 2020 at 16:39 UTC »
The headline is strictly true, but missing half the story: the aim is to have the entire population tested over these two days, and then treat/isolate as needed. It will be really interesting to see how this goes.
Edit: this might actually be over two weekends as noted below https://reddit.com/r/news/comments/jm3ybo/_/gatdgm1/?context=1 and with some exceptions https://reddit.com/r/news/comments/jm3ybo/_/gatsnmx/?context=1