On Wednesday of the previous week, PCR school tests were carried out for the last time. In Vienna, 258 students were positive, and there were 30 cases among staff. For Vienna’s City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker (SPÖ), it is already clear that there is now no phase of high incidence and therefore several rules are not needed. Nevertheless, he has no understanding for the end of the school tests. In Vienna, students can continue to submit a maximum of five throat tests per month on a voluntary basis.
Hacker is worried about going blind. Because the tests in schools once a week are not a particular burden, “but that’s a possibility. And the fact that we are consciously and intentionally reducing this to the extent that is currently the case makes me uneasy, because that is also our central monitoring system”. It was easy to see where you were right now, especially with the changes to the variants, Hacker said. For example, it is no longer foreseeable which variant is currently prevailing.
“Monitoring lags behind by three or four weeks”
“We now have monitoring that is three to four weeks behind. That means we will know by the end of June what took place in early June. And honestly, that doesn’t satisfy me at all. We have to be precise,” Hacker demanded. He doesn’t see it that after two and a half or three years, pandemic management is now being voluntarily put in a status “where we have to say we don’t actually know exactly,” says Hacker.
He considers it unprofessional to reduce the monitoring and sink into a blind flight. “I’ll admit that makes me a little concerned,” Hacker said. Hence his criticism: “I don’t want to only recognize a wave when suddenly many more patients open up in the hospital again. It’s already too late by then. We have to monitor earlier. If you have monitoring early on, you can identify early and react earlier.”
Timely monitoring before the next wave
Keyword reaction: Hacker expects that there could be a new wave in July. It is questionable that July will really be as quiet as now expected. In Portugal, for example, the level of the January wave there is already 50 percent.
Hacker: “The January wave there was in Austria in March. So if we are now in July, at the end of July, at 50 percent of the February-March wave and only recognize it from the hospital surcharge, then that’s not a good situation at all,” said Hacker. He sees the federal government as having a duty in this case: “The federal government is called upon, the two federal ministers called upon, to quickly ensure that the monitoring becomes precise again.”
Voluntary antigen tests after Pentecost
In Vienna, limited further testing can be carried out on a voluntary basis. The drop-in boxes at the schools are still available. The usual pick-up regime also remains in place. Pupils can use it to continue to hand in their “Alles Gurgelt” tests at school on a voluntary basis. However, according to the federal regulation, only five samples per month are evaluated.
Only in the case of tests ordered by the authorities, i.e. in suspected cases, can tests be carried out beyond this quota. It is not yet clear whether and to what extent the tests will be resumed in September. That depends on the infection situation, said Education Minister Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) at the beginning of the week. They have already been advertised with this restriction.
Regular PCR tests started in September
After Pentecost, antigen tests will only be used if necessary, if infections found elsewhere occur in a class. The regular PCR tests started in September. At that time, at least one PCR test per week (in addition to two antigen tests) was mandatory. Later, two PCR tests per week (in addition to an antigen test) were prescribed, although problems with the test provider made the changeover slow.
An exception was Vienna, where PCR tests were increasingly used from September and a different test system is used with “Alles gurgelt” (only from middle school/AHS lower level, later also at elementary schools). More PCR tests (and fewer antigen tests) were therefore carried out in Vienna.
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