The small white and blue test station on the sidewalk is in the middle of the nightlife zone around Torstrasse in Berlin-Mitte. It looks like a porter’s house – and that’s roughly what it is. Because behind this lie the many localities that are only allowed to come to those who have recovered, vaccinated or tested. Employee Hassan Ghazin tells us that a corona rapid test is no longer free for many. He estimates the number of customers to be around “half less”. But there are still the exceptions that still don’t have to pay anything. “That’s around a third,” he says.
Test station in Berlin-Mitte
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The list of exceptions includes, for example, minors, the socially disadvantaged or people who have to test themselves at the end of a quarantine. You will continue to get paid for the so-called citizen test. Even those who go to the doctor because they have symptoms remain free.
The new corona test rules in Germany came into force on October 11th. They are aimed at those who have not been vaccinated, who have previously been able to take a test free of charge and then go to a restaurant, for example. Everything should remain “fair”, said a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Health. This includes “that everyone had the opportunity to be vaccinated – now one can no longer expect citizen tests to be offered at the expense of the general public”.
“Not a sensible step”
Janosch Dahmen, doctor and health expert in the parliamentary group of the Greens, criticizes the decision that Chancellor Angela Merkel made together with the prime ministers of the federal states. “I don’t think the move makes sense,” he told DW. “In the third wave, we saw how much the rapid tests in particular helped us to slow down the rate of infection.” Around 30 percent of the population are still not vaccinated, warns Dahmen. “Testing can help to be more focused – we don’t know where the virus is, how fast it is spreading, and between whom.”
“Everything could have gone better,” criticized the Green politician Janosch Dahmen
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Austria is doing better, says Dahmen. There a similar decision has just been postponed for six months. Only in March, after the end of the cold season, should testing there also no longer be free.
The pandemic is currently stagnating in Germany. This affects the number of new infections and the situation in the intensive care units. “At the moment we are in a plateau phase,” said Gernot Marx, President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine. Around 1400 patients are currently in intensive care units – the highest level was almost 5800 cases. The situation is “under control”, but there can be no talk of relaxation. The Netherlands is currently showing how quickly the numbers can rise again.
Good business – social issues
The free citizen tests in Germany have been around since March 2021. After that, corona test stations of all sizes in cities shot up like mushrooms. Most recently, the operators were paid 11.50 euros for a test. The material costs are around 5 euros. For many it was good business. However, there were increasing reports of poorly performed tests and billing fraud.
Johann Nowak was on the market much earlier. In October 2020 he and his son opened the first test station in the rooms of his gallery in Berlin’s Auguststrasse. At the beginning there was a lot of skepticism, he told DW. “Another GmbH, it’s lying around like that, and after a month or two it’s over.” There are now 45 test stations in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main with several hundred employees. You can still tell from his nervous hands that he worked 18 to 19 hours a day for months. The operative business is now mainly done by his son and others from his environment. He still has enough to do.
A pioneer of the test scene: Johann Nowak, who provided the idea for “Schnelltesten Berlin”
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He does not believe that things are going downhill now, although numerous test centers across Germany have already closed in the past few days. His customer numbers are sometimes even better than in the previous weeks. “What we notice are the different districts,” he says. “In the poorer districts like Neukölln or Kreuzberg, the numbers are going down.” There are many who leave when you tell them that testing now costs something, “reports Nowak of his visit to a test center in Neukölln.” In the richer Apparently no one is interested in Mitte or Charlottenburg. “It is probably too early for a more detailed overview because the changeover was only a few days ago. But Nowak is already thinking about introducing cheaper tariffs for students, for example. A quick test normally costs 19.90 Euros for “Schnelltest Berlin”, which means that it is currently in the middle of the range in terms of price.
Complete overview is missing
A general overview of rapid tests in Germany is generally missing. The reports from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the national health authority, only relate to the PCR tests. So to the medically more meaningful laboratory tests, which are usually carried out as verification after a positive rapid test. And even here the RKI does not have a general overview, according to its own information.
A so-called corona rapid test
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Was there a small vaccination boom because of the new rules? In the three days before it came into force, the numbers for initial vaccinations were 15 to 25 percent higher. But then the trend of falling vaccination numbers continued again, which the RKI has been measuring since mid-June.
Everything could have gone better, says the Green politician Dahmen. The Corona warning app could have been used much more – as a digital central collection point, so to speak. “There should have been money from the state for citizen tests to the test centers only after the test result had been fed into the app. On the one hand, the results would have been recorded much faster and more regularly in the Corona warning app and, on the other hand, also for the application of the 3G rule can be displayed in a uniform and forgery-proof manner. ” Here, too, the Ministry of Health’s digital crisis management was “incomplete” – as was “often the case in the pandemic”.
Damen’s criticism of the old federal government continues. The test strategy was also “implemented inconsistently”. A look at neighboring countries such as France or Italy shows that the 3G rules are actually being implemented there, even on domestic flights, on trains or at work. “There we are incredibly incomplete.”
Who is following the rules?
There were no reports of major protests following the introduction of the new rules. An incident from a test center was reported in the Saxon capital of Dresden alone. A man requested a free test and when he was supposed to leave he hit a coworker. The police stepped in.
He opened Johann Nowak’s first test station in his gallery in Berlin’s Auguststrasse
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Is there a threat of a new polarization? Green politician Dahmen currently sees “no exclusion of non-vaccinated people”. This is not only due to the possibility that everyone can now be vaccinated, but also to the aforementioned loose review of the rules and evidence that is susceptible to forgery. A test can be identified “partly with self-made slips of paper”. There is a “huge gap between the emotionality of the debates about fair access and the consistency with which we actually systematically enforce the rules in the end”.
The entrepreneur Nowak finds another point worth considering. Because now even vaccinated people no longer get a free test. But that is “negligent”. In the meantime, word got around that there were also quite a few vaccination breakthroughs. The RKI currently reports 80,000 vaccination breakthroughs. There were also positive cases of vaccinated people with him, said Nowak. An exception should therefore be made for those who have been vaccinated. “So that they can be tested, for example when they want to go to a family celebration.”
So the testing business could go on for a while. Perhaps the rules will also be changed from other sources. The mayor of the Saxon city of 40,000 inhabitants Freiberg has announced that the tests for the residents will be paid for from the city coffers. That will cost 14,000 euros by the end of the year. This is also possible in federally organized Germany.
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