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Friday, September 04, 2020
The “debacle of the Corona test goes to the second round”, echoes from the opposition of the Bavarian state. Again, around 10,000 people have to wait longer than expected for their test results. It should be chaotic at highway and airport stations.
Waiting for days for the result of a crown test – that should be over. But in Bavaria there is another failure in the transmission of test results, with around 10,000 people affected. These had been tested for the corona virus at Bavarian airports between Saturday and Tuesday and did not obtain a result within the promised 48-hour period, as announced by a spokesman for the Bavarian Ministry of Health in Munich. The reason was an IT problem at the private service provider Ecolog, which is conducting tests on behalf of the Free State at Munich, Nuremberg and Memmingen airports. The speaker assumes that during the day all people tested in the period will receive their notifications of results.
On Thursday evening, the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL) admitted the delays at test stations at airports. The reason is “an interface problem in data processing” in Ecolog. In the past, there had already been problems with transmission to various test sites in Bavaria. In mid-August it emerged that tens of thousands of people had waited for days for his corona test result, including more than 900 people who tested positive.
Those affected also reported this week on the chaos at the Bavarian test stations also on the highway and were upset by waiting times for days. According to a spokesperson, the Ministry of Health assumes that operations at these stations are working to some extent. Consequently, the LGL also consulted the data on the motorways and train stations in the course of the last fault test. With some exceptions, there were no major delays in submitting test results within the 48 hour period.
Given the current situation, the opposition criticized the lack of management. “Prime Minister Söders Corona-Test-Debakel goes to the second round,” declared the leader of the parliamentary group of the Landtag Greens, Katharina Schulze. The Kitzingen district office warned of delays. “Earlier in the week, the association of accredited medical laboratories in Germany reported that there was a considerable backlog of evidence,” the authority said. The capacities of the local health department are “almost exhausted.” Therefore, results may not always be available within the expected one or two days.
Huml: transmission processes must be accelerated
According to the authorities, the technical problems of the recent breakdown have been resolved. The head of the department, Melanie Huml, said that LGL had noticed delays in the transmission of findings by the service provider during regular monitoring. “This process shows that the LGL control works during testing.” The LGL “strongly” requested Ecolog to accelerate the transmission processes immediately and transmit the findings as quickly as possible.
Huml also noted that so far around 370,000 people returning from a trip have taken swabs to check for a corona infection at test stations in the Free State, including highway service stations and major train stations. More than 4,600 of them tested positive. This shows “the enormous logistical challenge and at the same time the success of the tests,” says Huml. “Returning travelers in particular have played a special role in the infection process in recent weeks,” the minister said.
