Neighbouring Sweden has been able to hike coronavirus testing capacity by implementing a self-administered test -- an approach that is now being considered in Finland.
In the Länsi-Pohja hospital district in northern Sweden where Covid-19 infections have increased rapidly, public health officials are using a self-administered coronavirus sampling kit to ease testing bottlenecks.
According to Medical chief of Haparanda and Övertorneå (Ylitornio) Jari Havela there had been hundreds of requests for the self-service kits last week. He said that they help dismantle testing backlogs.
"If needed it can be delivered to the home and picked up, which makes people’s everyday lives much easier. It’s also much easier for us as it will likely help shorten queues at testing stations," Havela observed.
The epidemic is also spreading on the Finnish side of the border and the situation in neighbouring Tornio is among the worst in the country. In 10,000-resident Haparanda, officials diagnosed 64 new coronavirus cases in the past two weeks.
Finland relying on professionals for samples
The self-administered Covid test requires users to use a swab to get a virus sample from the nostril. They also have to provide a saliva sample for analysis. Carita Savolainen-Kopra, lead specialist with the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, THL, said that Finland is also considering taking this method into use.
"At the moment efforts are still being made to increase the number of sampling points and speed up access to sampling so we can make further progress with professional sampling," she noted.
She said that above all, the THL is now monitoring the reliability of self-service sampling. She added that there are still question marks about this approach.
"The success of the sampling effort, how much virus was collected at the time the sample was taken and how well the sample can be taken. There are doubts that we will get samples that are as good as those taken by professionals," she observed.
However Havela said he was more optimistic about the procedure.
"If you can use your finger to pick your nose then you can take a sample," he declared.
In any case using self-administered sampling kits to help with testing is something that public health officials in many countries would like to have, health officials noted.
"I would like to see how this progresses in Sweden and as we gain more experience, [I would] especially like to see the functionality of this saliva sample, then we will likely examine it here as well," Savolainen-Kopra said.
High infection rate in Tornio
Meanwhile on the Finnish side of the border in Tornio, the incidence rate for the disease was 251 cases per 100,000 residents on Thursday. The city has set up a separate coronavirus outpatient clinic as the case count has climbed.
The backlog at testing points also reflects the worsening situation.
With a population of 20,000 residents, Tornio has administered 90 tests per day at best, while the number in Haparanda is about 60 daily, according to Havela.
Meanwhile between 4,000 and 5,000 test samples have been collected weekly in all of Norrbotten. Havela said that laboratory analysis capacity in the province is inadequate, so getting results from self-service samples would also involve a dely.
Medical chief of the Länsi-Pohja hospital district Jyri J. Taskila pointed out that people who are not experiencing symptoms should not get tested. However, he said that there has also been a false perception in the region that a negative test result would also mean that people should not isolate as directed by public health officials.
"Asymptomatic people may get a false negative test result, meaning that at that moment the virus was not detected in the body. The situation could be different on the evening of the same day, so a negative result for an asymptomatic person cannot shorten the quarantine period," he noted.