Armed Forces rely on digital processing for mass testing – Coronavirus Vienna

This was announced by the Defense Minister’s chief of staff, Major General Rudolf Striedinger, at a press conference on Tuesday. This is to avoid crowds in the course of testing.

Striedinger made people sit up and take note when he claimed that teacher testing would not be a problem for the military, but that wide population testing by the military alone was not feasible, because ” armed forces will not mobilize. ”

Figures from Slovakia show how slow and laborious mass testing is. More than 3.6 million people were screened there in the first round. The country has 5.5 million inhabitants, all young people from 10 to 65 years old were called to take the tests. Striedinger explained that 40,000 people were deployed to prosecute him, including 10,000 soldiers and 10,000 policemen.

There was no electronic pre-registration in Slovakia and people waited on the site for their results, resulting in long lines, Striedinger said. People in Austria want to avoid such accumulation and are therefore highly dependent on digitization. An outside company develops its own program that takes care of everything from registration to booking an appointment and the outcome. According to the Major General, the first series of tests carried out by kindergarten teachers and teachers and the police between December 5 and 8 does not pose a personnel or logistics problem.

For the mass test of the entire population, which should take place before Christmas, things look different again. An implementation like the one planned for the teachers “won’t work that way” for the masses. “We will not be able to achieve that because we do not plan to mobilize the armed forces.” So these tests would be done much more at the community and city level, according to Striediger. One possibility, as in Slovakia, is to rely on electoral groups.

In South Tyrol, 300,000 people were tested over three days, shocking authorities at the massive fever. Community-level capacities were used to conduct the test. The infrastructure was determined by the municipalities, based on the requirements of the civil protection association. The test was carried out by medical personnel (Red Cross, White Cross). Fire brigades provided additional support, especially in rural areas.

A total of nearly 1,000 medical personnel, 700 administration personnel, 900 firefighters and other support personnel were deployed, Striedinger said. One was also surprised by the small number (one percent) of positive tests. You have calculated with five percent. Those who tested positive were immediately sent to ten days of isolation. The antigen test results were not verified by a PCR test because the antigen test was found to be sufficiently safe. In Austria, an immediate PCR test is provided for at least the first series of tests in case of a positive antigen test.

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