Govt plans 20,000 coronavirus tests a day

The government is planning to increase the daily coronavirus testing capacity of the country to 20 thousand samples from the current capacity of 14,000 as a move to get prepared for a possible second wave of the epidemic, said the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in a press release on Wednesday.

The authorities are also planning to accelerate the coronavirus testing boosting efficiency and aim to get people tested within 24 hours.

The ministry will put the updated coronavirus testing strategy into effect in the autumn in order to tackle the spread of the virus in the country as effectively as possible.

The goal of the updated testing strategy is for people to receive their test results within 24 hours.

The key measures to reach the goal are recruiting more personnel, internal arrangements, developing new testing models, and ensuring close cooperation between public and private regional service providers.

Wherever possible, rapid tests should also be used and processes should be developed in order to facilitate testing. A further aim of the updated strategy is to strengthen cooperation between public and private healthcare service providers.

In addition to sampling and analysis, sufficient tracing resources will be provided to break virus transmission chains.

The Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare (THL) supports coordinating the tracing of transmission chains at the national level. In addition, the mobile application Koronavilkku to be introduced in September will improve the traceability.

Another aim of the new strategy is to further improve and streamline the operational processes of quarantine decisions in order to prevent further infections.