- Saudi crown prince says no Israel ties without Palestinian state
- Canada to further cut international student, foreign worker permits
- YouTube launches new TV-focused tools for creators
- White Sox heading for worst season in MLB history
- China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat
- Hong Kong democracy tycoon's son warns time running out
- New migraine drugs no better than cheap painkillers: big study
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs again denied bail in sex trafficking case
- Brewers clinch division title as MLB playoff race heats up
- Man City blunted by 'giant' Inter in Champions League stalemate
- US stocks dip despite larger Fed interest rate cut
- Man City held by Inter as PSG pinch win in Champions League
- All Blacks recall Beauden Barrett for Australia Test
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 20, wound 450
- Spurs late show saves Postecoglou blushes at Coventry
- PSG snatch late goal to beat Champions League debutants Girona
- Gittens' late double gives Dortmund Champions League win at Brugge
- Man City blunted by Inter in Champions League stalemate
- Hidden talent: French Olympic star Marchand opts for disguise
- MrBeast named in California lawsuit over 'Beast Games' show
- Gauff splits with Gilbert as coach after 14-month run
- Hundreds of thousands at risk in Sudan's El-Fasher: UN
- Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex crime charge
- Venezuelan opposition candidate says letter conceding election was coerced
- Ukraine official claims Russian advance in Kursk has been 'stopped'
- X update allows app to bypass Brazil ban: internet providers
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 14, wound 450
- US Fed makes aggressive rate cut, weeks before election
- Arsenal's Odegaard faces lengthy injury absence
- India coal expansion risks massive methane growth: report
- China the top challenge in US history, top diplomat says
- US Fed makes larger half-point cut in first reduction since 2020
- Ronaldo's Al Nassr appoint former AC Milan boss Pioli
- Ainslie 'relieved' as British book place in Louis Vuitton Cup final
- Struggling Roma replace sacked icon De Rossi with Ivan Juric
- Women's NBA will add 15th team in Portland in 2026
- Brazil fires need harsher punishment: environmental police boss
- Boeing to start large temporary furloughs amid Seattle strike
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill nine, wound 300
- 'Emergency' declared over falling UK butterfly numbers
- McIlroy outlines threats to golf peace deal
- Stock markets, dollar slip before US rate decision
- Russian advance in Kursk 'stopped': Ukraine official to AFP
- UN members demand end to 'unlawful' Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories
- Snapchat pushes 'safer' platform image, but not everyone agrees
- Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions
- So where does the oceans' plastic waste come from?
- Allied war heroes buried in Netherlands... 80 years on
- Marsh coy over Australia's choice to open alongside Head
- New London sculpture pays tribute to trans community
CMSC | 0.02% | 25.055 | $ | |
SCS | 0.71% | 14.11 | $ | |
RIO | -0.02% | 62.91 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.12% | 24.98 | $ | |
NGG | -0.46% | 70.05 | $ | |
RBGPF | 5.79% | 60.5 | $ | |
GSK | -0.31% | 42.43 | $ | |
BCE | 3.09% | 35.61 | $ | |
AZN | 0.06% | 78.58 | $ | |
JRI | 0.45% | 13.44 | $ | |
BTI | -0.34% | 37.88 | $ | |
BCC | 1.33% | 137.06 | $ | |
BP | -0.37% | 32.43 | $ | |
RYCEF | 1.37% | 6.55 | $ | |
VOD | 0.49% | 10.23 | $ | |
RELX | -0.82% | 47.37 | $ |
Austria Covid-19 'gargle' tests in expansion drive
Throughout the day, vans loaded with bags full of Covid PCR test kits arrive at a Vienna laboratory, currently analysing an average of 370,000 tests per day.
With more than 144 million tests carried out since the beginning of the pandemic, the Alpine nation of nine million is a leader in Covid testing.
But with the latest Omicron wave sending cases spiralling, health experts and policymakers are asking if widespread testing -- paid by taxpayers' money -- is necessary and efficient.
The Lifebrain laboratory, which accounts for a major part of the country's testing, has been expanding rapidly since it began work just over a year ago on the sprawling ground of a public hospital on Vienna's outskirts.
Under the "Alles Gurgelt" ("Everybody Gargles") system, Viennese can register online, go to a drugstore, pick up a test kit, gargle at home and then drop the kit back and wait for an email with results within 24 hours.
"It's extremely low-threshold," Lifebrain CEO Michael Havel tells AFP.
- Better screening -
Vienna came up with the system in late 2020 to offer better screening for the capital's two million people.
Havel's laboratory, which analyses the "Everybody Gargles" tests, now employs 1,800 people full time and can analyse up to 800,000 tests a day and run 24/7.
A third of its workforce were hired in the last two months alone. The city pays six euros ($6.80) per test to drugstores and others giving them out.
At the laboratory, workers from dozens of countries drag the bags full of test kits through the aisles of the laboratory set up in rooms in several old buildings on the hospital campus.
Scanning the bar codes on the test tubes one-by-one, they place the tubes into trays for analysis in designated high-tech machines. Computers eventually spit out results saying which batches contain positive Covid samples.
Currently mainly receiving tests from Vienna, Havel says he is prepared to expand capacities within Austria. Before the pandemic Lifebrain, which Havel co-founded, was most active providing laboratory work in Italy.
"Everybody Gargles" tests are already part of the rigorous testing regime in schools -- with students tested several times a week -- and Vienna is now looking to expand the system into kindergartens too.
- 'Gas and break at same time' -
Ulrich Elling, a researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who helped develop the gargling method, said the "Alles Gurgelt" system was "extremely efficient".
"So far this test strategy has made a lot of sense... (but) now with Omicron, everything is different. If you go for 'herd immunity,' then the question is to what extent it makes sense to step on the gas and brake at the same time," he told AFP.
"In autumn I fear that the next wave will come our way... I think testing will only not be necessary anymore once the pandemic is over," he says.
E.Schubert--BTB