Why Portugal’s Covid-19 test rate is more than double almost every other nation – Telegraph.co.uk

While in the UK the NHS kept tight control of testing until recently, the Portuguese government quickly realised spreading the load was the answer.

As recently as May 1 to 17, non-state labs were still responsible for more than half of the almost 14,000 tests being conducted daily.

But the roots of Portugals world-class Covid-19 testing regime began much earlier.According to Our World in Data whose testing rates have been cited by the OECD and others Portugal has been among the top 10 countries in the world for testing per capita since mid-April.

On Friday, Denmark (with a GDP per capita 2.7 times that of Portugal) and Lithuania (with a similar GDP per capita to Portugal) were the only nations of more than 2 million people with a higher testing rate.

Like most countries, Portugals initial testing efforts started slowly amid difficulties securing kits in a ferocious global market.

The stress initially was to provide testing, said biology professor Miguel Viveiros, deputy director of IMHT.

We were not prepared for testing in quantity for the speed of transmission. In early March, Portugal was testing less per capita than the UK and much of Europe.

Professor Maria Manuel Mota, director of the institute of molecular medicine at the University of Lisbon, was speaking to doctors at the large university hospital on campus. They were worried about having enough tests to make sure the disease wasnt spreading rapidly in the medical community, let alone for the wider population.

Obviously there will be no testing for everyone, they told her. It is a difficult test, it takes a few hours, you know, it's expensive.

Sitting at home on March 11, Professor Mota quickly discovered that didnt have to be the case, thanks to her institutes experience with PCR-based tests for malaria.

The test we do all the time in almost every single lab in our institute is PCR, so it should not be difficult, she remembered thinking. Instead of relying on expensive kits that come from abroad we could design something.

To lead the project, she called on researcher Vanessa Zuzarte Lus, who had a potential testing protocol in mind within a few hours. The next day they were speaking to a Portuguese company about manufacturing the reagents needed for the tests, one factor UK authorities blamed for testing difficulties.

They were ready and working within a week, leaving only accreditation from the Dr Ricardo Jorge National Institute of Health left to secure.

The Portuguese authorities were fantastic, Professor Mota said. As soon as I called the right people they told us okay, let's validate this together. The accreditation process ran smoothly and the tests were being rolled out to nursing homes by the end of March.

Within two or three weeks, university labs and private institutes across Portugal were using the protocol developed at IMM, or developing their own, to bolster public testing efforts.

In the UK, independent labs trying to take similar steps were still complaining their offers to help were being ignored as late as April 10, well after health secretary Matt Hancock set a target of 100,000 tests a day.

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Why Portugal's Covid-19 test rate is more than double almost every other nation - Telegraph.co.uk

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