we are heading for a single test after a high-risk contact for the vaccinated
To reduce the pressure on general practitioners and screening centers, the Ministers of Health meeting in Interministerial Conference (CIM Health) decided on Saturday to no longer require two tests for vaccinated people who have had a high-risk contact, but just one. The information is confirmed to VTM by the Flemish Minister in charge of Health, Wouter Beke.
Are you vaccinated and high risk contact? The double testing procedure on days 1 and 7 may well change. You should normally be tested only once after the contact in question. This modification should be part of the new testing strategy presented in the edition of the Interministerial Council of Public Health.
The modalities are still not defined, warns the Federal Minister of Health Frank Vandenbroucke nevertheless: “In this extremely difficult time, perhaps we should simplify this diagram for the vaccinated by saying Day 1, temporarily that may be enough if there is too much pressure. But we are fine-tuning the decisions, a more precise communication will arrive at the beginning of next week.“
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Note that quarantine will not be mandatory. On the other hand, in pending this test, your Covid Safe Ticket will be suspended.
Finally, IThe Consultative Committee also suggested that there would soon be screening centers open, without an appointment. But about it “the possibilities are still being explored“, We tell CIM Health.
Relieve the medical staff
The objective of this new screening strategy: to relieve medical staff, in particular general practitioners. We do not have never tested as much as at this time. We also broke a record last Friday with 131,840 tests carried out in 24 hours on November 19, however the real number of contaminations continues to be underestimated. Results : testing / tracing can no longer follow.
During the Concertation committee this Friday, November 26, the Minister of Health Frank Vandenbroucke recalled that it was not necessary to call on the general practitioner to be tested.
This is why we put on the table another testing strategy so that general practitioners are a little lighter in this work.
“This is why we put on the table another testing strategy so that general practitioners are a little lightened in this work too, on an administrative level. We are really going to intensify the use of test centers” walk in “, where we go without an appointment and where we can do this test, to take the pressure off the front line. This is crucial.», Explained Deputy Prime Minister Petra de Sutter (Groen) this Friday on La Première.
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In addition, according to Covid-19 interfederal spokesperson Yves Van Laethem, this new strategy will halve the number of tests carried out.
“We know that we are currently close to the maximum with our 100,000 tests per day. The importance at this time, if the test is done on D + 3, for example, is that the person, during the first days, does not go to do anything and that he takes a maximum precautions. We have to see how we would frame this rationalization of testing“, he explained at the microphone of Thomas Gadisseux on the Première.