{"id":89392,"date":"2020-10-14T23:36:13","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T20:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/to-fight-virus-spread-vienna-turns-to-bike-couriers\/"},"modified":"2020-10-14T23:36:13","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T20:36:13","slug":"to-fight-virus-spread-vienna-turns-to-bike-couriers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/to-fight-virus-spread-vienna-turns-to-bike-couriers\/","title":{"rendered":"#To fight virus’ spread, Vienna turns to bike couriers"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#To fight virus’ spread, Vienna turns to bike couriers<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Hoping to increase the number of coronavirus tests, the Austrian capital Vienna has a new weapon: instead of pizzas, bike couriers are now delivering Covid-19 tests.\n <\/p>\n

“In the city we’re speedier than cars, because we can get through dense traffic faster and don’t need to look for parking spaces,” said Marcus Hanauld, a 25-year-old messenger bike courier who until three weeks ago was delivering takeaways.<\/p>\n

To test and trace potential cases faster, more than 100 bike messengers working for courier service Veloce are now delivering the city’s free “gargle tests” to around 1,000 people every day.<\/p>\n

Like many countries across Europe, Austria is battling to contain a surging number of coronavirus cases, with Vienna currently accounting for about a third of the country’s overall infections.<\/p>\n

Donning a mask, goggles and a fresh pair of surgical gloves, Hanauld hands each of the five members of the Mihailovic family a cup of saline solution, instructs them to gargle for at least half a minute, then spit the solution into test tubes which he’ll take to a lab at the end of his eight-hour shift.<\/p>\n

Veloce’s bike messengers have been delivering Covid-19 tests since the beginning of October, in part due to heavy criticism that testing and contract tracing in the city of 2 million has been slow and inefficient, allowing the virus to spread rapidly. <\/p>\n

By the end of the month, the city wants to scale up to about 200 couriers, in addition to other types of tests, such as drive-through sites and ordinary testing teams being dispatched to those who have to quarantine.<\/p>\n

“It tastes like when we took a holiday by the sea,” the family’s 12-year-old daughter, who tested positive in a wide-scale testing drive at her school last week, tells her younger siblings.<\/p>\n

Hanauld was trained to administer and correctly store the test samples in his insulated backpack as well as how to protect himself from contracting Covid-19, but refers patients to the city’s free health hotline when it comes to medical questions.<\/p>\n

“I recognised right away that he must have arrived by bike, because he carries the same backpack I had when I worked as a pizza delivery boy,” the family’s father, Mihalo, said.\n <\/p>\n\n

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Roche rolling out high-volume rapid Covid-19 test by year-end\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2020 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n To fight virus’ spread, Vienna turns to bike couriers (2020, October 14)
\n retrieved 14 October 2020
\n from https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news<\/a>\/2020-10-virus-vienna-bike-couriers.html<\/p>\n

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