I sat and watched N-TV (German commercial news) this AM, and there's short update on 'free' Covid 'quickie' tests. In each community, you've got a small two-person operation where you walk in....present your ID, and you get Covid-tested. In the Wiesbaden (293k residents), I'd take a guess that twenty establishments exist around the city.
Naturally, you'd ask me if they are actually 'free', and I'd just grin. The government pays these people 18 Euro for each test. Around 8 Euro is for the test kit itself, and the rest is for the profit/cost/manpower.
So to the news item....the city authority in Hamburg started to look at the quickie results. Things didn't add up....in terms of the positive results.
What they can say is that in the past couple of week (the start-up of summer)....there were fair number of false-positives. Basically, the warmer it got...the more screwed-up the results were. By mid-June, they were up to around 80-percent of folks 'flagged' as positive....being really negative when the PCR test was applied at clinics.
Why? Unexplained. Test kits might react to summer heat. Maybe there's some contamination issue. There is no factual data to lead you to even suggest a cause.
All of this worrying folks? If this were me, and I'd just tested.....I'd be highly disturbed after the 'quickie' results were texted to me. I'd have to go and do a PCR test at my doctor's office and probably start worrying about another bout with Covid.
But this brings up another issue.....is this only happening in Hamburg? Are there other German cities noticing this trend? No one says much.
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