Asymptomatic Covid testing available to some from today

From today, people who had close contact with a Covid-19 patient can be tested for the virus even if they do not have symptoms. This applies to everyone who came up in the GGD source and contact tracing, or got a notification from the CoronaMelder app that they may be infected.

Asymptomatic testing will be done 5 days after last contact with a Covid-19 patient. That is enough time for the virus to develop in your system to be picked up by a test if you got it. "And until that fifth day you will stay in home quarantine, as is already the case now," Minister Hugo de Jonge of Public Health said in a press conference last month.

If you test positive for the coronavirus, you will have to quarantine until you are recovered. If you test negative, you can go back to your normal life.

Until now, people who were notified that they were in close contact with a Covid-19 patient had to quarantine at home for 10 days and get tested if they started showing symptoms.