An average of 6,000 people per day have had a coronavirus test at one of the ‘test for entry’ locations nationwide since the programme started at the beginning of June, but the 76 centres have capacity to carry out 225,000, website Follow The Money said on Tuesday.

The Open Nederland foundation (SON) is paid a fixed fee to run the testing service whether it is used or not. And even though 97% of the capacity has not been utilised to date, the health ministry plans to expand it to up to 350,000 test centres by the end of the month.

‘That is to create a dense network, making testing easy to access and meeting peak capacity moments,’ a spokesman told FTM.

So far few ‘test for entry’ events have been organized – last weekend’s Euro 2020 football and the EuroHockey championships were among them. Theatres, zoos and cinemas which are also able to use the system have largely opted not to.

The 11 commercial companies which have organized the testing after winning the SON tender process are paid €387 euro per dag per vaccination cubicle and €130 per hour for staffing it.

The total bill for the project, which runs until the end of August, is now put at €700m, down from an earlier estimation of €1.1bn.