The Koper Community Health Centre, one of the 16 coronavirus testing points in Slovenia, has introduced the country’s first drive-in system for taking swabs from potentially infected persons to significantly reduce the time needed for a single test.
In addition to saving time for employees and patients – one test takes 10 instead of 30 minutes – the centre also saves on protective equipment, Ljubica Kolander Bizjak, the director of the centre, has told the STA.
Under the new system, a person who suspects that they are infected contacts their personal physician, who decides if they should be tested. The person then contacts the community health centre and gets a date for the test.
The person then drives to a dedicated parking and is swabbed, and then instructed to remain self-isolated until the results of the test are known.
The drive in testing has been introduced on proposal from employees, who were taking samples in a designated container, where the process took 30 minutes per person, as the container needs to be ventilated for at least 15 minutes and sanitised.
Kolander Bizjak said that drive-in testing was performed in two locations in Koper. The average daily number is 40, but the number sometimes reaches 60, and if a test would take 30 minutes, the system would get “clogged”, she added.