Once the second wave of corona infections is over, mass testing could help prevent a third wave. In addition, the entire population of a region where the virus flares up again should be tested. This is what the head of ECDC, the European umbrella organization for RIVM, among others, says in an interview with the NOS.
“We now need to figure out what to do to avoid a third wave,” said ECDC Director Andrea Ammon. “Mass tests are a method, especially if there is massive testing with rapid tests and the results are available quickly. You would have to repeat that with a certain regularity.”
The idea is not new. Slovakia already tried in one weekend to test the entire population. In Belgium, scientists are even advocating weekly testing of the entire population after this wave. By analyzing test results from hundreds of individuals at once, the labs could handle that too. The condition is that there are far fewer corona infections than at present.
“Those mass tests will pick out people who have no or very few symptoms at all. By isolating them, the virus won’t be able to spread any further,” Ammon says. “It is a good idea from a certain point on. Maybe not for entire countries, but for a certain area where we see that there are still infections.”
EU not yet past its peak
For now, the EU countries are still in the second wave, says Ammon. In the Netherlands, the number of infections may decrease somewhat in recent weeks, but this is not the case throughout the Union. “We do see the increase slowing down, but we can only say that we have reached the peak when we really go down. It is still too early to say: we are relaxing the measures.”
Ammon also warns against too much optimism about a vaccine, about which the last week – again today – positive messages came. “They will not make the measures superfluous at an early stage,” she expects. “It will strongly depend on the properties of a vaccine. How well do they work? How many people want to be vaccinated? We really have to wait and see. Vaccines are certainly not a panacea.”
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