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SVT has reviewed the reports from the county administrative boards for the past week and it appears that various regions, one way or another, are having trouble with testing.
“It is currently difficult to cope with the increasing demand for testing. The system of self-sampling and monitoring of infections under heavy load,” writes the Skåne County Administrative Board.
Risk of a long wait
The Jämtland County Board of Directors writes in their report that they have an “uneven ability” to pass tests across the region. Gävleborg that there can be long response times when pressure is high and Gotland that they have to wait a long time for a response from the Karolinska lab they send their samples to.
In a press release, the Stockholm Region describes the need for testing as huge and growing. For four days the possibility of requesting a home test has been stopped because the laboratories already had 17,000 samples in queue that had to be analyzed.
Today they reopened that possibility but with restrictions.
– A limit has been introduced for the number of home tests that can be requested per day to guarantee access for, among others, patients and health and care employees, says Maria Rotzén Östlund, interim doctor of infection control at the Stockholm region.
Calls for coordination
Several regions are also calling for more coordination. The Jönköping County Administrative Board writes that there is “a great need to expand the national testing capacity before the winter cold / covid / flu season.”
– The regions are responsible for the tests. We have a dialogue with them to see how we, from the Swedish Public Health Agency, can help with the actors contracted by the state in the regions that want it, says Karin Tegmark Wisell, head of department of the Swedish Public Health Agency.
They are now urging the public to follow the regions’ recommendations for testing.
– It is important that everyone tests themselves responsibly. Test the symptoms, but not otherwise, unless it’s part of infection tracking or something similar, says Karin Tegmark Wisell.
