People working in home-care, youth-care, and care for the elderly will also be tested
Translated by Thomas Ansell
As reported by the Omrop Fryslân the GGD Fryslân, along with the other 24 GGD agencies in the Netherlands, will start wide-scale testing for healthcare workers outside hospitals from today. They will be able to be tested whenever they have worked with patients that may have been infected with the COVID-19 Coronavirus.
In Leeuwarden, the test centre is located on the Izore Microbiological Lab. Testing is open to all that work in the field of healthcare, for example midwives, family doctors, home-care workers; youth-care workers, mental healthcare workers, those that care for the long-term disabled; and those that work with the elderly.
People are being asked to wait for 24 hours after any symptoms that could be the Coronavirus first appear. They will then be referred on to the testing centre by either a business or family doctor.
The various GGD’s hope to be able to complete 100 tests per day- and are aiming to have results available within 24 hours of testing, said a spokesperson for GGD Nederland. Up until now, those that work in hospitals with people suffering from the virus have been able to be tested, but a lack of capacity meant that not all healthcare workers could be tested too. This led to criticism from both the Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament), and the care sector.
Minister Hugo de Jonge (CDA) of Health said last week that the national capacity for testing would be raised by around 4,000 to a total of 17,500 per day. He then suggested that eventual capacity would reach 29,000 tests per day. On Sunday, the Ministry of Health said that further capacity had been found, but did not say exactly by how much.
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