Some of the education and healthcare staff with corona-related complaints are temporarily given priority when testing for the virus so that they no longer spend unnecessary days at home. Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Health) wrote this in a letter to the Lower House on Friday.
Some of the education and healthcare staff with corona-related complaints are temporarily given priority when testing for the virus so that they no longer spend unnecessary days at home. Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Health) wrote this in a letter to the Lower House on Friday.
In education it concerns staff in (special) primary and secondary education. The minister reports that they will be given priority if it is necessary to prevent children from receiving education. The scheme does not apply to childcare employees.
Part of the healthcare staff is also given priority. This concerns employees who, among other things, cannot be replaced by a colleague and who are also essential for patient and client care and the continuity of care.
This includes laboratory employees, self-employed workers, temporary workers and employees who are paid from a PGB. The priority rule does not apply to persons who provide unpaid and informal care.
Next week, the GGDs will look at how the priority system is set up. Among other things, it is being investigated whether fast lanes can be created in regional hospitals for care workers.
Initially, the cabinet did not want to make a distinction
For a long time, the cabinet did not want to make a distinction between testing professional groups with corona-related complaints, but in response to concerns in the House of Representatives about staff shortages, it nevertheless discussed the options with the GGD.
Due to a shortage of capacity in the laboratories that analyze tests and the growing demand for corona tests, the test lines of the GGDs are under pressure. The number of test requests is currently higher than what the GGDs can handle, so people have to wait longer for an appointment and the corresponding results.
De Jonge is working on increasing the lab capacity. To this end, he has made agreements with three parties abroad. He expects the capacity problems to be resolved by early October. Only when more lab capacity is available can the test capacity be further scaled up.
Now almost 37,000 corona tests can be performed daily. The minister hopes that this will be 50,000 a day by the end of September. That number must have increased to 70,000 a month later. “An uncertain factor in this remains how the test demand develops”, he says.
