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Iceland is allowing everyone in the country to be tested for the coronavirus. The government says it spent years perfecting its approach.
Coronavirus cases account for 0.36% of the nation's population, which is much higher than the US,Iceland's case count could be so proportionately high because they have taken a radical approach to testing.
Even people without symptoms may take a test. According to Iceland's government website, about 20,930 people, or about 6% of the population, have been tested. As of Wednesday, theIceland teamed up with a biotechnology company to help run COVID-19 testing In order to expand its testing abilities, Iceland's government teamed up with Reykjavik-based deCODE Genetics, which is a subsidiary of the US-based biotechnology company Amgen. Data from the country has shown that 50% of the people who tested positive for COVID-19 in Iceland were asymptomatic, which confirmedAlong with voluntary and random testing, Iceland is also working to quickly identify individuals who have come in contact with others who tested positive for COVID-19, and is urging those people to isolate.NBC News reported"Every second somebody is getting infected, so obviously we want as few people infected as we possibly can," detective Gestur Palmason told NBC News. "As quickly as we can, we have to reach everyone that might have been in contact with someone who's positive, and try to stop them before they get in contact with more people."The work in Iceland has helped researchers pinpoint areas where the virus first started to spread in the country,"We can determine the geographic origin of the virus in every single [virus] in Iceland," he said.Iceland has not implemented lockdowns in the country, though it has banned gatherings of more than 100 people.that tracing the virus to its origin and the country's mass testing allowed the government to hold off imposing a lockdown. "There is also another reason, no less important, we have pursued a very aggressive policy of quarantine for individuals — suspected to be at risk of having contracted the virus — for much longer and at a higher scale than most other countries we are aware of," the organization told CNN.that Iceland's small population allows the government to have higher testing capabilities. He said the mass testing is "intended to gather insight into the actual prevalence of the virus in the community, as most countries are most exclusively testing symptomatic individuals at this time."It remains unclear if such testing would work in larger countries, like the US., though, that Iceland has spent years preparing for a pandemic in ways other countries have not. "We have been writing up response plans anticipating this event coming," he said in an interview. "We have been preparing different partners in the society for this to happen, and so it's relatively easy for us to activate the plan." Iceland's health director, Alma Moeller, told NBC News that she expects the epidemic to peak in the country in mid-April. She hopes to expand capacity and staff in hospitals to accommodate future cases. "It looks to us now that we have this relatively under control in Iceland," Kari Stefansson, chief executive of deCODE Genetics,Something is loading. Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you'd like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please emailfrom Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses.
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