World Health Organization’s top boss, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said it plainly yesterday: If we want to fight the corona virus, there is only one thing to do. And that is testing, testing and testing again.
“You can’t fight a fire blindfolded. We can’t stop this pandemic if we don’t know who’s infected,” Ghebreyesus said at a news conference. Only problem with this approach: there are insufficient test materials.
Isolation chamber free again
For example, the Maasstad Hospital in Rotterdam has the equipment to conduct four hundred corona tests per day, but in practice it does about a hundred. This concerns patients from their own hospital, other hospitals in the region, a nursing home and hospital staff.
Medical microbiologist Marjolein Damen says that simply not everyone can be tested. “The materials for the tests are scarce. We notice that manufacturers are difficult to supply.”
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The tests are very important for the hospital. “It is important to get the results of a test quickly, anyway for the patient himself. But it also has further consequences for the hospital,” says Damen.
“It could mean, for example, that an isolation room is released again, because the patient appears not to be infected.” Not only is the room free again, such a rash also means that staff have to use fewer masks.
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It is also important for healthcare personnel to know whether they have corona among the members. Employees who do not have a corona, but who have a cold, for example, can continue working.
Recently, there is one in the University Medical Center in Utrecht drive-through corona test available to staff. This is a special lock in the staff garage where a test is taken. After this they go home to wait for the results. People who are not ill can simply continue to work in the hospital after this.
Worldwide demand
Meanwhile, medical technology companies are working hard to develop corona tests. A new test by the Roche company was accelerated on the market last Friday. This test can be done automatically and in large quantities at the same time, up to a maximum of 4000 tests per 24 hours.
However, sufficient test materials must also be produced for this. “We have increased production to the maximum and are now able to produce 8.5 million corona tests per month,” said a Roche spokesperson. The total global demand for corona tests is unclear.
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