Coronavirus, covid-19 | NIPH: – Current situation with testing is not sustainable

In its latest risk report, the National Institute of Public Health expresses considerable concern that too many people are being tested today, that this is exhausting health workers and laboratories, and that it will be much worse. During autumn.

– The current situation is not sustainable and should be quickly improved. The mismatch between demand and capacity needs to be rectified so that current testing criteria can be followed. With the current criteria for testing, the need for testing will increase significantly as late fall and winter bring many respiratory infections into the population, FHI describes.

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– The usefulness of tests can be lost

This mismatch can lead to problems, according to FHI:

• Municipalities and medical-microbiological laboratories spend large resources on sampling, analysis and responses. Since the general test work is now organized, there may be a risk of wearing down personnel, affecting other activities, and consuming equipment and reagents on demand.
• The response time of laboratories can be so long that the usefulness of the tests almost disappears. Delayed detection of infection means that the contacts of infected close contacts may have time to transmit the infection.

They are particularly concerned that there seem to be too many people testing themselves for no reason:

– The media reports on the outbreak of the epidemic and the great attention paid to testing and the constant calls for testing, possibly leading many people to worry and get tested for no clear reason. The proportion of positive tests is now in most places well below 0.5%; there are at least a couple hundred negatives for every infected person out there, writes FHI.

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You want a new testing strategy

In its document, FHI describes three measures to remedy the situation:

• New technology should complement current test systems where useful. Saliva as sample material can reduce resource use and discomfort during sampling, but makes laboratory analysis somewhat more complicated. Patient tests (“rapid tests”) may play a role in some settings.
• The testing strategy needs to be updated in light of upcoming challenges. Greater awareness of the purpose of testing and what is needed to achieve these purposes is needed (see table below). Regardless of the presumed prevalence of the epidemic in a housing and labor market region, testing at a certain level should be maintained for monitoring purposes. It should be possible to increase the frequency quickly if an outbreak is detected.
• Investigation should be made of how samples from different groups and for different purposes can be channeled to ordinary laboratories or high-volume specialized laboratories. You can, for example, have a race for priority testing of seriously ill patients and patients involved in flare-ups, a race for all those with mild symptoms, and a race for research and monitoring projects (with mixed tests).