Gebauer: Test procedure changed, but not failed

Created: 01/26/2022, 15:31

Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) is waiting for the school committee meeting to start.

© Federico Gambarini/dpa

School Minister Yvonne Gebauer has defended the short-term changes in the corona test procedure for primary school children in NRW against criticism.

The test system did not fail, emphasized the FDP politician on Wednesday in Düsseldorf.

But it was attacked from two sides and had to be changed.

On the one hand, the number of infections has skyrocketed and the laboratories have reached their limits.

Düsseldorf - On the other hand, NRW must adhere to the decision of the Prime Ministers' Conference (MPK) on Monday.

Accordingly, the PCR tests, which are considered to be particularly accurate, must be concentrated on certain groups, i.e. prioritized.

Gebauer said she would have liked the school system to be classified as systemically relevant and part of the critical infrastructure - and thus fallen under the prioritization.

She regrets that the MPK decided differently here.

However, the high-quality pool test procedure was partially retained for the elementary school students and fully retained for the special needs students.

School tests have so far taken up around 45 percent of the laboratory capacities, explained Gebauer.

She understands criticism of the adjustments, which meant additional effort.

However, the minister rejected allegations of communication.

She acted and informed as soon as possible.

In NRW, school operations continue to run well.

Around 93 to 94 percent of the teachers are on duty.

Between 95 and 99 percent of the students had taken part in face-to-face classes in the past few weeks.

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What has been new since Wednesday is that in the case of a positive pool result for the school class in the lollipop PCR tests, elementary school students are only retested with quick tests.

Previously, students had also submitted individual PCR reserve samples, which, if the pool result was positive, were quickly checked in the laboratories in a second step in order to identify infected children.

This is no longer necessary and will be replaced by another method based on a quick test.

dpa