The country needed to overhaul its testing strategy and come up with a plan for the seasonal flu vaccinations, the president of the German Medical Association, Klaus Reinhardt, told dpa.

Rapid coronavirus tests are as accurate as the usual swab test, he said.

“But they would enable many more people to be tested in an uncomplicated fashion and to break chains of infection more quickly,” Reinhardt said.

Germany’s top disease control agency, the RKI, said in its epidemiological bulletin on Thursday that the increased amount of testing in the country had led to a backlog of 17,142 specimens to be processed between August 10-16.

Meanwhile, 41 laboratories reported delivery problems for reagents.