Ljubljana - A new PCR testing protocol introduced this week does not take much pressure off laboratories, while it gives health providers at primary level more work, the newspaper Dnevnik says on Saturday. It believes the country's PCR testing capacity should have been increased a while ago because the Omicron wave was an expected event.

With the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreading very rapidly, PCR testing has become an unnecessary tool in the country's efforts to contain the epidemic.

It is being preserved merely for the sake of the reconvalescent-vaccinated-tested (PCT) rule, even if this rule is also questionable as a means of managing the epidemic.

Nevertheless, this could not be an excuse for the Health Ministry to not prepare a sensible protocol, Dnevnik says in the commentary Ship of Fools in the Omicron Storm.

It suggests that PCR testing to confirm the infection could be eliminated for those who have already received a booster shot and for the fully vaccinated convalescents.

It says that their Covid pass is nevertheless valid, both groups are quite well protected against a severe Covid, and it would take the pressure off the laboratories.

The country should have increased its PCR testing capacities earlier because it was predicted already a month ago that positive test results will soon start rising.

Instead, the National Laboratory of Health, Environment and Food started sending the samples abroad this week, and made a multi-million public purchase deal with a foreign lab without publishing a full-fledged public tender, allegedly because "this event could not have been anticipated".

Dnevnik says it has been clear for a while the country is being stirred through the virus storm by the unable team of captain Janez [Janša], which cannot even get guidance from abroad anymore because signals coming from there are all too contradictory, with the UK lifting all measures and Austria introducing mandatory vaccination.