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 Unlike many other countries, Finland is limiting coronavirus tests
to the most vulnerable groups and healthcare personnel only. The
national health authority says testing people with mild symptoms
would be a waste of healthcare resources.
"We don't understand the WHO's instructions for testing. We can't
fully remove the disease from the world anymore. If someone claims
that, they don't understand pandemics," Finland's head of health
security Mika Salminen of the Finnish Institute of Health and
Welfare told the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper.
The WHO's director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on
Wednesday the test and trace strategy "must be the backbone of the
response in every country".
Finland's visibility of the spread of the disease has weakened
rapidly after it began restricting testing last week, with
authorities citing lack of capacity to meet high demand.
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By Thursday, only around 3,000 people had been tested for the virus in Finland,
resulting in "around 400" confirmed cases, the health authority said, adding the
real number of those infected could be 20 to 30 times higher.
Salminen said Finland could test around 1,500 people a day but is not using the
full capacity.
"We are not doing as many tests as possible but rather when needed," Salminen
said, adding the test was not a treatment.
"Those who can be sick at home, won't benefit from testing," he said.
The Finnish government said on Monday it would inject more money into testing to
increase capacity.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen; Editing by Alexander Smith)
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