Some 450,000 educators, students to be supplied with self-testing kits

The first big batch of self-testing kits for the novel coronavirus is expected to be distributed among some 450,000 secondary school educators and students, paving the way for the reopening of high schools on Monday.

The self-administered swab kits are distributed free of charge by pharmacies on the basis of teachers’ and students’ AMKA social security numbers. 

Foreign students who are not registered with the Greek public health system or whose parents do not have a tax number in Greece will reportedly be issued a temporary AMKA for the purpose of acquiring their testing kits, though it was still not clear on Friday exactly how this can be accomplished.

In the meantime, the Education Ministry’s plan for gradually reopening schools is to make self-testing mandatory twice a week, so that proof of a negative result can be submitted to each school’s administration every Monday and Thursday. Positive test certificates will be issued by the self-testing.gov.gr platform (available only in Greek), which will be monitoring the results of the campaign.

For households that do not have access to a printer, parents or teachers can fill in a handwritten declaration form.

In the event that a self-test comes back positive, the platform will instruct the user to have another test conducted by a professional health worker at a public or private facility. People who test positive should stay at home until they are given the all-clear.