By Anne Kauranen

HELSINKI (Reuters). Increasing coronavirus infected are forcing Finland’s local authorities to abandon the COVID-19 strategy, which is based on tracking and mass testing.

Helsinki and other cities in the vicinity recommend that mildly infected people not undergo an official test. The waiting period can reach days now, Helsinki’s mayor and Helsinki’s hospital district stated together on Tuesday.

Pasi Pohjola of the health ministry, said that “the hospital district and its cities have to prioritise having a workforce in hospital care or inoculation.”

Finland’s minister in charge of the COVID response, Krista Kiuru, warned https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-finland-long-covid-idUSKBN2JH14W on Friday that long COVID could become Finland’s largest chronic disease and that children were also at risk. [L1N2TN0X3]

Additionally, she expressed concern about returning to school being unsafe and asked for strict quarantines to be implemented at schools where one student’s COVID infection could result in quarantine of the whole class.

However, Sanna Isosomppi (Helsinki’s chief epidemiologist) told Reuters that the municipalities in the capital area were going against the advice of the minister.

Isosomppi stated that it would not be reasonable to place large-scale quarantines in schools if they aren’t a high risk environment.

Isosomppi explained that mandating quarantines was no longer an effective means of controlling the epidemic.

The government has used testing and tracing infections to combat the pandemic for more than a decade. But this week, local authorities started to rebel openly against these measures.

They stated that “Tracing Infections has lost its effectiveness because of delays in testing the patients and in getting in touch with them,” in a statement.

Helsinki and eleven other capital regions municipalities had previously stated Monday they are abandoning the mandate to quarantine infected people in many cases and instead focusing on health care and senior care.

Authorities recommended that anyone suffering from symptoms (including children) stay at home and not return to work.

Isosomppi, along with nine other top Finnish infect specialists, published an open letter last week against the plan of Kiuru’s Ministry to close schools and bring back remote learning.

The Finnish government could not be reached immediately for comment.