Illustrative stock photo (source: TASR)
Tens of thousands of people will have time to recover from Omicron and will no longer be infectious by the time they attain the result of their positive test taken several days prior.
By the beginning of February, people in Slovakia might not be able to get an appointment for PCR or antigen testing in time.
“I estimate that in two or three weeks, there might be 50,000 newly infected a day who will not get their appointment for PCR testing,” mathematician Richard Kollár, who has been modelling the course of the pandemic, estimates.
So there will be a long list of people waiting for results. They will wait six or eight days, he estimates.
Antigen tests will not replace PCR tests. The state does not plan to stock the tests and only 860,000 of them are in stock. Such an amount was used at the peak of the recent third wave of the pandemic in two and half weeks. The number of the infected should be much higher this time.
The Health Ministry has primarily antigen tests in stock, but these tests are reserved for testing children in schools and unvaccinated employees.
New lab would not help
When the third wave peaked in November, the daily number of conducted PCR tests was between 20,000 and 30,000, or the maximum daily limit
