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Styria and Lower Austria were the last remaining federal states to begin mass crown testing on Saturday. The workload at the stations was different. Whereas in Graz, for example, there was sometimes a great rush with short waiting times, there were hardly any queues in Lower Austria, but so few serious downtimes among medical staff. The positive rate in Styria was 0.4 and in Lower Austria 0.15 percent.
Test stations in St. Pölten. Image: GEORG HOCHMUTH (APA)
Of the approximately 1.25 million inhabitants of Styria, around 190,000 had registered for the tests online or by phone on Saturday morning. As reported by Harald Eitner of the Department of Disaster Control and National Defense, 90,228 examinations had been conducted by 12 noon. 0.4 percent of these or 364 results were positive. All of these had yet to be confirmed by PCR tests.
In Graz, with its around 295,000 inhabitants, 35,000 people registered for a test on Saturday. About 20,000 people had swabbed at noon. 163 of them were positive, corresponding to a rate of 0.81 percent, as Christian Köberl from Mayor Siegfried Nagl’s (ÖVP) office announced to the APA on request.
VL: Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler – Minister of Labor Christine Aschbacher, Minister of Defense Klaudia Tanner and the Governor of Styria Herrmann Schützenhöfer at a test station in Graz. Image: Stiegler / Federal Army
Styrian Governor Hermann Schützenhöfer (ÖVP) appealed again after his own investigation in the Graz Helmut List room to take advantage of the free quick test. “We had high expectations. We will see that registrations have increased again today and there are not so few who have not registered and have just come,” said the country manager optimistically for the next few hours.
A total of 187 test stations and almost 780 lanes are available in Styria. There are ten stations in Graz. Around 8,000 people help with the processing and organization. In some stations of the state capital there was a lively race, also in the regions. “In the morning, quite a few came to the test who had not registered, which, for example, at Voitsberg or at the University of Graz, caused short spikes,” Eitner said. Also in Graz, some people who wanted to take the test had to wait up to 15 minutes; for most, the test road visit ended after a few minutes.
In Lower Austria, the number of registrations on Saturday morning exceeded the threshold of 500,000, and by 3pm, more than 528,000 online bookings were registered. With 1,530,000 beneficiaries, this corresponds to a rate of 34.5 percent.
Of the 212,770 tests conducted so far, 316, or 0.15 percent, were positive. The favorite in the smears taken at the district level was St. Pölten with more than 18,300. In Lower Austria’s own provincial capital, 3,600 people were tested until around 2 pm, according to a city council spokesman, two positive results were recorded.
For area-level investigations, 1,276 stations were installed in the 573 municipalities of the state. Around 20,000 volunteer and full-time employees will be deployed over the weekend to meet the logistical and organizational challenge. 6,000 of them are provided by volunteer fire brigades, nearly 1,800 by the Red Cross.
With all the enthusiasm of the helpers, which was also evident during the APA local inspection in Zwettl, the number of those willing to take the test was more normal. In St. Pölten and Wiener Neustadt, the two largest cities in Lower Austria, there were no complications or long waiting times. What was evident at both locations was the tight organization, which also secured positive feedback on the test roads themselves and on social media.
During a visit to the test route in Tulln, the Governor of Lower Austria, Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP), praised the ongoing campaign as an important element “to get out of the pandemic”. He also noted that online registration is not a prerequisite for visiting a test station: “Those who have not registered are also welcome to participate in the tests.”
