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The coronavirus continues to spread, the cantons are reaching the limit of their testing capabilities. In the past few days, more than 30,000 people have been tested every day across the country, that’s not much more.
The result: queues form in front of many test centers and wait times are sometimes several hours. And the positivity rate skyrockets.
Last week, an average of about 25 percent of all smears resulted in the discovery of a coronavirus infection. However, according to the World Health Organization, the number of cases no longer provides a reliable picture from a positivity rate of five percent. Therefore, the number of unreported cases of infected people in Switzerland is likely to be high.
Rapid antigen tests from the Basel pharmaceutical company Roche could help. They are free and admitted from Monday. Doctors’ offices, pharmacies, and testing centers can use them to find out in 15 minutes if someone is corona-positive using a nasopharyngeal swab. However, the reliability is somewhat less good than with previous PCR tests.
600 pharmacies with rapid tests
However, it takes weeks before rapid tests are used on a large scale. The goal is up to 50,000 antigen tests of this type per day. The pharmacists association Pharmasuisse estimates that by the end of the year a third of all Swiss pharmacies, about 600, will offer rapid tests. The first branches should be ready on Monday.
“Some pharmacies in the canton of Schaffhausen and in the canton of Zurich are likely to be ready faster,” says spokeswoman Rahel Rohrer.
