The test track in Germering is the only one in the district where you can have a virus variant test done.
(Photo: Carmen Voxbrunner)
In the end, Vera Gedon rode her bike from Fürstenfeldbruck to the test track on Kerschensteinerstraße in Germering. On Epiphany, 15 kilometers one way, at one degree plus and accompanied by her husband. On the way back they got caught in a shower of sleet and sleet.
The 66-year-old had to undergo a PCR test in order to end her 14-day corona quarantine. Because she – double vaccinated and boosted – was found to be infected with the omicron variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus. She had tested herself around Christmas because she wanted to go to the gym. She hardly had any symptoms. “Without the test, the infection would not have been noticed,” she says.
Gedon finds it understandable that infection with the highly contagious virus variant requires special measures. “But what I then read in the instructions for the final test was speechless,” she explains. “The smear is only possible … at the Germering test track. The journey there and back must be made by private car alone,” says the instructions that the Fürstenfeldbrucker received by email from the district administration. Nowhere else in the district can Omikron infected people be tested freely.
The problem: Gedon doesn’t drive a car out of conviction
The problem: Gedon doesn’t drive a car out of conviction, doesn’t even have a driver’s license. The instruction made the woman, who is committed to the Evangelical Church of Grace in the Fürstenfeldbruck Christian Council, so outraged that she turned to the Southgerman newspaper turned. She fully understands that you cannot use public transport with a possible Omicron infection.
But she is not the only one who cannot drive a car. There are also people who are too young or too old to do so, who have a visual impairment or a seizure disorder, those who are not motorized for environmental reasons or those who simply don’t have the money for a driver’s license and a car.
At the request of the SZ, the district office explains that the family doctor could actually do the test. But Gedon’s doctor is on vacation. The press spokeswoman says there is definitely a way out for people without a car. You can find out the way out – a mobile test team that comes home – when you call the health department. But it shouldn’t be published. The press spokeswoman is surprised that Gedon was not informed about this when she asked the office. It was probably a communication problem.
“Beautiful is different”
The fact that the PCR tests for Omikron infected people are only offered in Germering is due to the fact that there is no space for a separate test site on Zenettistrasse in Fürstenfeldbruck. And in terms of time one could not separate “because people do not adhere to the given times”. If at some point omicron becomes the predominant variant, everything will change again anyway. Because then you no longer need to keep the Omicron infected from the others.
With the phone number recommended by the press spokeswoman and also in conversation with her family doctor, Gedon is now trying to find a solution to her problem – in vain. She has a lot of understanding for the constraints and regulations that the employees in the offices are subject to, and everyone was very friendly. The citizens would not be taken along enough in the whole pandemic. “After two years and a change of government, there is still panic.”
In any case, countless telephone calls did not lead to a visit to a test team, but to the bike tour, about which Gedon says: “It was okay, but it’s nice. That there was no other solution after all the conversations and discussions shakes me.”