Because more test material is available, laboratories in the Netherlands can scale up their capacity considerably to more than 51,000 tests per day. The National Coordination Structure Test Capacity (LCT) reports this to the Wednesday WE. The number of daily tests is thus 20,000 more than last week’s capacity.
However, the GGDs need at least another week to be able to take those extra tests in the test streets.
According to the GGD, upscaling can be done in three ways: current test lanes can have longer opening hours, test lanes can test several people at the same time in parallel or new test lanes can be added. All three options require time and more staff.
“Our expectation is that we will be scaled up sufficiently in the course of next week. The aim is as quickly as possible, but it is a mega-operation”, a spokesman for GGD GHOR Netherlands told NOS.
At the end of August, the GGDs stopped scaling up the test capacity by order of the Ministry of Health, because there was too little test material in the laboratories at the time.
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