The testing at Lisbon airport is working normally this Tuesday, ANA Airports told Lusa, adding that 300 tests were made by late morning and 1361 on Monday.
“The testing at the posts of the Lisbon airport works, today, with normality,” said ANA Aeroportos de Portugal, in a written response to the Lusa agency.
According to the same source, by late morning today 300 tests had been performed on covid-19.
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Already on Monday, 1,361 coronavirus screening tests were performed at the Synlab post at Humberto Delgado Airport.
When asked about the waiting time for the test results, the Portuguese airport manager said that “it varies depending on the type of test and the affluence”.
“The times observed are: for an antigen, between 45 minutes and one hour, for rapid PCR four hours and for PCR-RT between 10 to 24 hours,” he said.
ANA appealed to passengers who intend to take tests at the airport to take into account the “time needed to perform the tests and obtain the results, when planning their trip”.
On Sunday, ANA reported that the means of testing for covid-19 were doubled at Lisbon airport over the weekend, but, given the “high demand”, appealed to passengers to favor other places to perform the test.
“Despite the reinforcement of means and increased capacity for this weekend, demand remains high. Therefore, we request that passengers perform the test before coming to the airport and that this is not considered as the first option,” an official source from ANA — Aeroportos de Portugal told Lusa news agency.
According to the company, “passengers who wish to perform tests at the airport should make their previous scheduling on Synlab’s website”, and “priority will be given to passengers with a flight for the same day”, stating that “about 2,200 tests” were performed on Saturday.
Television images broadcast on Saturday afternoon showed huge lines of people waiting to take the covid-19 test at Humberto Delgado Airport, a situation that continued on Sunday.
Synlab, the entity responsible for the testing center at Lisbon airport, assured Lusa on Saturday that it would test all passengers, with and without an appointment, advancing, around 23:00, that 1,800 people had already been tested, a new maximum.
“We intend to test today [Saturday] all passengers, with and without appointments, waiting at Lisbon airport, so that no one is prevented from traveling,” said an official source of the company in response, in writing, to questions asked by Lusa.
According to Synlab, the queues resulted from the fact that the airport’s testing center was the only place open on the first day of the year for testing covid-19.