The new PCR pool tests will start on Monday at all elementary and special needs schools in the district.
District Administrator Christoph Göbel (CSU) informed about this at a press conference on Thursday.
In other districts and in Munich, the first experiences with the "Lolli tests" have been made.
They are considered more child-friendly and - once the process has become established - carried out more quickly.
Instead of the antigen tests, they are done twice a week in the classes.
And this is how it works: The children suck on two swabs for 30 seconds, then one of the chopsticks goes into a shared class bag, the “pool”, and the other into a single test tube.
The samples are taken from the school to a laboratory and evaluated there overnight using a PCR test.
This is how the pool test works
If the class bag, the so-called “pool”, is positive, at least one child is infected. Then it is time to continue research: The individual reserve samples in the test tubes are used to determine who submitted a positive and who submitted a negative sample. The parents of the infected children are informed by the health department and the children are quarantined for at least five days, including bank neighbors if necessary. The advantage: The PCR pool tests are safer. Throughout the district, the number of fully vaccinated (230 823) still exceeds the current number of first vaccinations (230 498). According to Göbel, the number of new infections in the district has increased slightly. In the past seven days, 312 new infections have been added. 614 people are currently infected - an increase of 20 compared to the previous week. The situation is relatively stable, said Göbel.Even with the incidence of hospitalization, everything is in a good range. It is 0.86 (Bavaria-wide 2.1), which means that 0.86 out of 100,000 people came to a clinic last week because of the infection.
Göbel was satisfied with the response to the 103 special campaigns to date, for example on the vaccination buses.
So far, 5,767 people have been vaccinated in this context, including 2,968 first vaccinations, 2,756 second vaccinations and 43 booster vaccinations.
More and more booster vaccinations
Since the Stiko recommended vaccination from the age of twelve, some parents have been able to decide in favor of vaccination.
Numbers were not recorded because the young people who are accompanied by their mother or father use the services in practices, vaccination centers or on the vaccination bus.
The booster vaccinations are also picking up speed: 840 booster vaccinations were administered in 16 senior citizen centers, with 721 residents and 119 employees.
As Göbel had expected, the number of infections in daycare centers and schools has risen since the beginning of school: If there was only one case in the first week, 91 people are now infected in 55 facilities, 79 from the district.
In the nursing homes there are nine residents from five facilities and 17 infected employees from ten facilities that have tested positive across the district.
