Hamburg Airport COVID-19 Testing - Interview with Dr Volkmar Weckesser, CIO at CENTOGENE
Interview with Dr Volkmar Weckesser, CIO of CENTOGENE, who operate the COVID-19 testing centre in Hamburg Airport, as they do in Frankfurt, Berlin and other airports. Dr Volkmar is speaking with TravelMedia.ie MD Michael Collins on Friday 27th November 2020.
For more information or to book a test visit:
https://www.centogene.com/covid-19/te...
First, could you talk to me a little bit about the set up that you have here at the airport, in terms of your capacity and the different tests that you offer currently?
In Hamburg Airport we currently have two testing sites and the set up is typically that people are requested to use our digital platform. So you need to register, we need to get the core data which is due to the health regulations so that in case of positive cases we are able to report accordingly to the authorities and intersect and cut the infection chains. And after that you experienced the entrance to our testing facilities where typically we do a small health check, we check the temperature, so that we don't have symptomatic people there, we are offering it only for asymptomatic people. They check that you are registered on our platform, yet you purchase the test and then you are directly going to the testing area where they do a throats swab, we do for both the antigen and the PCR test the throat swab and then your samples are registered to your profile so that we know them. So from this point of view, both tests we are offering to you are pretty much the same, the antigen test as well as for the PCR, we are taking two swabs if you get regular PCR tests with the 24 hours we just take one due to the service offering there. And then one hand side, we offer the antigen test which has a touch of roughly one hour, where we analyze the sample directly near the airport or on the airport side and a truck we've placed there you've may have seen it, where we run the instrument. That is interesting that we are not using tests where you just put it on a small stripe but we use a fluorescence based machine to read the results of the antigen reaction which is critical for us to get high sensitivity. Because what we found when we validated the antigen tests that the other ones which you just, you as this so-called point of care tests and you just look at a stripe, don't have the sensitivity and we miss roughly 50% of the positive cases. So that's the reason why we are not using that, we use this one in the truck and then you'll get your result via our platform. In the other case, your sample is shipped by Korea to our lab, which is in Hamburg city center. And they are sent processed in the typical PCR, we do an extraction of the RNI, we insulate and then we give it to a qPCR machine. So running several cycles, multiply genetic information and then check whether we find the genetic information in the samples we got from you. And the same thing is you get a notification that dear customer, your result is already in your part. And again, you need to check in and you can download it in several languages. The antigen is roughly done within the next 60 minutes, the PCR takes... We offer the two products one take six hours, the other one 24 hours. The PCR is more precise by a factor of 10 to 100, compared to the antigen with the PCR we can catch one to two viruses premiere creditor testing what we get.
In terms of capacity, obviously everybody wants travel to open up again in Europe the numbers traveling are quite small, globally and in Europe. So capacity for you at the moment, you're able to handle it. No problem. What do you see as the future next year, when Europe hopefully does open up or do you think we're gonna have to wait for a vaccine or do you think we can handle maybe rapid testing and allow many more people to travel?
In Hamburg and the testing facility I would say with the new capacity we have, I feel comfortable to test up to 3,000, 4,000 people a day, which is not so much in terms of former air travel. Nevertheless, it's something that we can open definitely more than we have as of today. And I think the vaccine will help us to overcome some hurdles, but even with the vaccine we won't have 100% of really vaccinated people. So the question is, what are you going to do with the others do you accept that? Do you want to have some tests and flights to be sure that people are there? I see the growing demand of these tests and I see the big advantage of the antigen test is the speed compared to the PCR. So I see a growing market in that area.
And do you have concerns that the antigen obviously is not as accurate as the PCR, do you think governments and airports and airlines will accept that, as screening process that is, good but not perfect?.....................