“The Netherlands has very little capacity for blood tests.” Inland

That says Feike Sijbesma, who was appointed as special cabinet envoy this week to work on sufficient test capacity. The concern about this focuses mainly on the amount of tests that determine whether someone has corona. There are too few of them, but there are also problems in other areas.

Sijbesma says at Op1 that there is also “very little capacity” for blood tests, which can be used to check afterwards whether someone has already had corona. Blood banks announced two weeks ago to start a nationwide investigation into the spread of the coronavirus. They want to do that by testing the blood of regular donors, which is about ten thousand a week.

But Sijbesma indicates that there is only limited capacity for those blood tests. “We will see if we should buy them or if we can produce them ourselves,” says the special envoy. According to him, those tests are not made in the Netherlands, and not much in Europe either. There is a large supplier in China, says Sijbesma.

Roche

Sijbesma achieved his first success in his new role on Friday. The Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche decided to release the recipe for corona tests after a negotiation game. This also allows other parties to take the tests.

“But we are not there yet”, Sijbesma does not want to cheer too early. “There are many more problems, that recipe is only one thing.” According to the special envoy, for example, pictures and other things are also needed to be able to produce more tests.

Sijbesma acknowledges that other countries test much more than the Netherlands. This happens on a much larger scale, especially in Asia. “There they quickly realized at the beginning of the outbreak that they want to test a lot and then bought a lot.” Europe and America, where corona had not yet erupted at the time, were not so concerned at the time. “All these countries are now trying to purchase tests,” says Sijbesma.

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