Since the 3-euro fee has been in place, significantly fewer Berliners have gone to the rapid corona test Photo: picture alliance/dpa
By Isabel Pancake
The number of corona infections is no longer meaningful due to fewer and fewer tests being carried out.
Significantly fewer Berliners test themselves for the corona virus! Namely only about a third as many… The reason: the new test fee! The Senate now wants to determine the true number of infections through wastewater tests.
In the last two weeks with a free offer, Berlin still counted 621,492 tests. In the first two weeks after the introduction of fees, the number of tests fell significantly: to 202,216. This emerges from the response of the Health Senate to a CDU request. Since July 1, pushing one-time sticks up your nose has cost three euros.
For the Senate, the infection numbers are no longer meaningful: it therefore now wants to measure them against other indicators. Corona viruses can also be detected in wastewater.
The health administration announced: “The Senate’s preparations for the pandemic management in autumn/winter 2022/23 also include the topic of situation assessment and indicators, and an expansion of the wastewater investigations is intended.”
The laboratory of Berliner Wasserbetriebe (BWB) has been examining the wastewater since July 2021. Intensified since February 2022: Twice a week, samples are taken from the inflow of the Ruhleben sewage treatment plant.
And the studies show that the so-called SARS-CoV-2 copies in the wastewater and the conventionally calculated incidence values are developing in parallel. The results could soon play a crucial role in Berlin’s corona measures.
