Airports can be a petri dish for COVID-19. Now you can get a test on-site
Get a Covid test at the airport
Adaptations to the physical spaces of airports may soon become more common, as air travel rebounds and the companies dependent on it seek to assuage the fears of customers.
Of the many causes and culprits behind the global spread of COVID-19, the international airport is probably the easiest to blame. As an open portal to almost anywhere in the world, the airport is both the way in and the way out for highly contagious diseases. Now, airports are beginning to try to cut down this risk by offering COVID-19 testing facilities directly on-site.
Earlier this week in Germany, Frankfurt Airport opened a coronavirus testing facility, operated by Centogene, a German biotech company. Located before security on a lower level of the main terminal of one of the world’s busiest airports, the facility is equipped with eight testing spaces capable of performing throat swab Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction tests. Customers are taken into small booths the size of changing rooms and swabbed by medical professionals. The facility has the capacity to collect up to 300 test samples per hour. The tests are then processed in a bright red shipping container lab situated nearby in a disused parking lot, and Centogene can return results in six to eight hours or, for an added fee, within three hours for passengers planning to fly the same day. Costs range from 59 euros (about $66) to 139 euros (about $155) for expedited results. For another surcharge, they’ll issue a certificate verifying the test results—a literal clean bill of health passengers can show health officials at the other end of their flight to avoid quarantine.
Volkmar Weckesser, CIO of Centogene, says discussions with the airport began about six weeks ago, and once plans were solidified it took only three days to complete the testing space. The container lab was simply trucked onto the site. “What we see is it’s not so difficult to build such a facility,” Weckesser says. If the need for testing eventually falls, the facility can be disassembled and removed, he says, or stored on-site in anticipation of future outbreaks.