Kári Stefánsson

The healthcare authorities in Iceland began screening people considered to be at high risk in the beginning of February and they found the first positive individual on the 28th of February.

So I think that Iceland was probably the only country in the world to begin to screen before there was a single case in the country.

But we decided on the 7th of March

to offer our help because we believe that it was very important to know how widely the virus had entered the population in general.

Because when you're making decisions on containment efforts, it's extraordinarily important to know where the virus is.

So if it is all over society, it is really difficult to base a decision solely on individuals at high risk.

So what we did was that we offered anyone who wanted to be tested to be tested as long as they did not have the signs and symptoms of COVID-19.

And we have by now screened about 6,000 individuals.

We have found about 54 positive.

So we find this in about 0.9% of the population of the population that we screened.

And when you look at that in the bigger picture, there are about 620 who have been diagnosed with the disease.

And there has been a team from the time when the first individual was diagnosed, there has been a team that has been tracking contacts with those who are diagnosed.

And we have 6,000, 7,000 individuals in quarantine.

But at the same time as the healthcare system was focusing in the beginning particularly on people coming from the Asps, from the high risk areas in Northern Italy and Austria, the population screen has shown us that as they were focusing on people coming from these areas, there were a lot of people coming from countries like England who were infected.

So now we sit up with

let's say 620 individuals who have been diagnosed, the possibility that 1% of the population is infected, which would mean that there would be about 3,000 individuals infected who have not been discovered yet.

So it's extraordinarily important that we continue to screen and increase the volume that we screen to help to find those who are infected so we can

effectively use containment efforts.

The first question is, how widely are the virus distributed in the country?

Number two, where is the infection coming from into the country?