Test capacity expanded faster than expected: already at the end of October | NOW

The capacity of test laboratories has been scaled up faster than expected in a short period of time, spokespersons for the umbrella organization of GGDs and the Ministry of Public Health confirm in conversation with NU.nl. Currently, more than 56,000 corona tests can be administered per day, numbers that only seemed realistic at the end of October.

Partly due to the rapid expansion, it is expected that around 70,000 tests per day can be taken by the end of October: those numbers were not expected until the end of November.

The total test capacity of the test laboratories is even higher. In total, more than 62,000 tests are currently being analyzed every day, but this also includes tests for other diseases and various other medical examinations.

Weekly figures from the GGD GHOR show that almost 223,000 tests were taken last week, more than fifteen thousand tests more than the previous week. According to the spokesperson, this is a direct result of the increased capacity at the test laboratories.

“We now have to scale up to a level that was not expected until the end of October,” said the spokesman. The GGDs repeatedly stated in the past that further upscaling was no problem for them, because hundreds of additional tests only cost a few man hours more.

The Netherlands works together with test labs from Germany and Belgium

However, the Ministry of Health asked the GGDs to wait with scaling up the amount of tests, because the capacity at the test laboratories was more difficult to expand. Various test labs from Germany and Belgium are now helping to increase the test capacity.

Due to the limited test capacity, it has been very difficult to schedule a corona test in recent weeks. Telephone lines of the GGDs became congested and ten thousand people a day could not schedule a test.

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