Covid-19. Portugal made more than 400 thousand tests to covid-19 on the penultimate day of the year | Covid-19
More than 400,000 tests were carried out Thursday, a new daily high since the beginning of the pandemic, announced this Saturday the Task force of testing.
“Portugal reached, last Thursday, a new maximum of daily testing with 402,756 tests performed (positivity rate of 9.2%), of which 307,698 (76%) were rapid antigen tests (TRAg) for professional use” , said the same source in a statement.
According to the National Medicines Authority (Infarmed), a total of 1166 pharmacies and 681 clinical laboratories are carrying out free tests to the population, under the exceptional and transitory reimbursement scheme.
According to Task force responsible for the testing strategy, since the beginning of 2020, approximately 26.5 million covid-19 diagnostic tests have been performed, numbers that do not include self-tests.
Since December 1st, more than five million tests have been performed, including about 3.6 million TRAg, a figure that is related to the need provided by the Government to present a negative result for the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the access to various services or locations and with the increase of testing points in the country.
TRAgs in laboratories and pharmacies that adhered to the exceptional reimbursement scheme were once again free of charge since November 19, due to the increase in cases of occurrences registered in the country.
On December 21, and taking into account the festive season, the Government decided to increase the number of tests that each person could take monthly from four to six, but the reimbursement, from this Saturday, was limited to four tests per user.