A Polish mountain spa town has provided free coronavirus antibody tests for all of its residents and aims to repeat the operation in March. The mayor hopes that the testing drive will revive its tourist industry, which supports 90% of the town’s population.
On 20 December, Świeradów-Zdrój in southwestern Poland, near the Czech border, distributed 3,400 free tests for all adult residents of its district to check for IgM and IgG antibodies, the former of which indicates an active COVID-19 infection and the latter a past one, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.
Tests were distributed on a free and voluntary basis, and the results were anonymous. The programme was launched immediately before Christmas so that residents could make an informed choice about whether they would participate in family gatherings over the holidays.
Świeradów-Zdrój also hopes that its testing drive can attract tourists back. “We want to show that we are a place free from the coronavirus so that tourists and patients [of health resorts] can visit us without fear,” the mayor, Roland Marciniak, told Gazeta Wyborcza.
The pandemic and resultant lockdown – which includes the closure of ski slopes and hotels – have resulted in waning tourist numbers. Over 90% of the town’s 430 businesses have had no work, Marciniak said in December. “Whole families are unemployed. For them affording bread is a problem,” he added.
Several days after the tests were distributed, 103 people with positive results came forward to local clinics. “Lockdown does not solve the problem, it only slow the rate of the disease’s progression,” says the mayor. “It is crucial to test as many people as possible and isolate those infected.”
Poland has the EU’s second lowest coronavirus testing rate in relation to population. Since the start of the pandemic, only Bulgaria has performed fewer tests per person.
Marciniak suspects that more people had positive results but did not want to come forward to avoid quarantine. “Following our tests, we reached the conclusion that for every ten people, at least six pass the infection without symptoms and may unknowingly be a carrier,” he said.
The mayor also told Gazeta Wyborcza that such tests are hard to come by in the local area, and that Świeradów had to import them. “Unfortunately, they cannot be bought in pharmacies in small towns,” said Marciniak.
The town now plans on repeating the test around the end of March and extending it to those who also travel to Świeradów for work – a total of around 6,500 adults. The whole operation in December cost the town 150,000 zloty (€33,250), with individual tests costing between 90 and 115 zloty over the internet.
Świeradów’s 19th-century spa house offers mineral water as well as radon and mud bath treatments. In 2008, the town opened a ski lift – only the fourth gondola lift in Poland at the time – to boost visits to its winter ski resort.
Main image credit: Kasias32/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0 PL)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
