Austria's test streets have to report 200 positive corona tests every day - according to a claim that has been circulating on social media since the beginning of February.
However, an AFP fact check shows that this is a hoax. This is shown, among other things, by the actual Corona numbers in Austria, which are significantly lower.
The facts: A man received a supposedly fake-positive result after a visit to an unnamed test street. He is said to have subsequently refuted this with another test from the pharmacy. He is said to have reported this to the test line, where the employees apologized to him and told him that they needed 200 positive tests every day. The man told this to his masseuse in the Waldviertel in Lower Austria, who in turn reported it to a colleague via a messenger. As evidence of the matter, a screenshot of the message is now spreading on Facebook and Telegram, among others.
Claimed number unrealistically high
Based on the information in the message, the corresponding test line should record 1,400 positive results weekly and 5,600 per month. However, there have never been such a high number of positive results in any of the 290 test locations in Lower Austria. The exact number of cases can be tracked on the dashboard (LINK: Perma | Lower Austria tests – Dashboard ), broken down by postal code. With around 6.9 million tests between the beginning of the year and the time of the post (February 9th), there were between 900 and 3,000 laboratory-confirmed positive results every day across Austria - in Lower Austria between 164 and 467.
If the results are positive, proceed differently than described
The described course of the case also does not match the actual procedure that is actually followed in the event of positive Covid tests. Rapid antigen tests are used in Austrian test lines, which are checked again using a more precise PCR corona test if the result is positive. Those affected must be in quarantine until the result is received. The man in the story should neither have gotten another pharmacy test nor driven to a massage.
Federal states deny such high case numbers
In order to rule out all eventualities, AFP's fact checkers also asked other federal states as part of their research whether there were more than 200 positive test results per day. Ultimately, the man described was able to have himself tested elsewhere than in Lower Austria.
Feedback from those responsible in Burgenland, Carinthia, Upper Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Vienna all drew the same result: there were no test streets with 200 positive Covid tests per day. Norbert Schnurrer, spokesman for the city of Vienna, said that “200 per day is a completely logical number for conspiracy theorists - but it can in no way be linked to reality.”
Creation of the message
In a Telegram version of the messenger message, the claims from “Poldi” are addressed to “Michi” – these names can be seen in the screenshot. The AFP fact checkers finally found Michi's profile on Telegram, which allowed them to contact Poldi, who in turn confirmed that she had written the message. After asking her massage colleague, she said that the claim made in the message did not come from her customer himself, but was simply passed on by him.
Source:
Austrian Corona test lines do not fake 200 cases every day | Fact check (afp.com)
Guest author: Annika Hommer from “ Something With Writing ”
Notes:
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