The GGDs will stop testing for corona after Friday. Since June 2020, people with corona complaints have been able to go to the GGD for a test. That means the end of the corona era.
On March 10, the cabinet immediately deleted all corona rules. Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health) then also decided that testing for corona is no longer necessary, because it no longer has any added value.
According to the OMT, corona has reached an endemic phase in our country. The disease can now be treated in the same way as flu, for example.
Anyone who wants a PCR test after Friday, for example for a trip abroad, must go to a commercial testing company.
The GGDs say goodbye to testing in Tiel, where a symbolic ‘final test’ will be taken on Friday. At the end of the day, all test locations close.
Sewage and hospital admissions remain under control
However, sewage checks will continue and the number of hospital admissions will be monitored. This makes it possible to detect more pathogenic or more contagious variants of the corona virus.
The vaccination locations of the GGD will remain open, although there will be no new vaccination round against corona in the spring of 2023. People with a high medical risk who have a referral from a medical specialist can still get an extra repeat injection.
People aged twelve and older who have not had a corona vaccination or repeat shot at all can still go to the GGD.
Ontvang meldingen bij nieuws over het coronavirus
‘Never fully prepared for the next pandemic’
It is the end of an era full of measures, protests and lockdowns. We learned a lot from that. Nevertheless, GGDs will never be able to fully prepare for the next pandemic, says Moniek Pieters, national test coordinator at the GGD. “But they are more ready than three years ago,” she says.
After we first visited people’s homes for testing, we quickly found out that testing had to be done on a larger scale. From June 2020, anyone with complaints could have themselves tested for corona at the GGD. “On the first day we already received 320,000 calls from people who wanted to make an appointment.”
There was much criticism of the test operation. The waiting times were long before people could go for a test and the results also took days to arrive. Whether that would immediately improve in the event of a new pandemic, she cannot say.
“You never know what’s coming. Suppose next time everyone has to get blood drawn for a test.” There is therefore little point in holding back a stock of test material.
