General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAggressive testing helps Italian town cut new coronavirus cases to zero
An infection control experiment that was rolled out in a small Italian community at the start of Europes coronavirus crisis has stopped all new infections in the town that was at the centre of the countrys outbreak.
Through testing and retesting of all 3,300 inhabitants of the town of Vò, near Venice, regardless of whether they were exhibiting symptoms, and rigorous quarantining of their contacts once infection was confirmed, health authorities have been able to completely stop the spread of the illness there.
Andrea Crisanti, an infections expert at Imperial College London who is taking part in the Vò project while on sabbatical at the University of Padua, urged countries that have been limiting virus testing, which includes the UK and US, to learn lessons and ramp up the numbers of people being screened.
In the UK, there are a whole lot of infections that are completely ignored, Prof Crisanti said. We were able to contain the outbreak here because we identified and eliminated the submerged infections and isolated them, he said of the Vò approach. That is what makes the difference.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/aggressive-testing-helps-italian-town-cut-new-coronavirus-cases-to-zero-1.4205354#.XnGiL82svgI.twitter
intrepidity
(7,307 posts)lark
(23,121 posts)It is totally incapable of doing the job but it was chosen because it's owned by Jared's brother and drumpf is a part owner. We are literally dying for his profit.
Igel
(35,320 posts)We have 325 million people. That would need to be tested in the course of 24-48 hours, and then retested again maybe 4-5 days later, and then retested again 4-5 days later ... 4 or 5 cycles of that should be enough. That's only 1.4 billion test kits.
We're talking not 1 million tests per day, not 10 million tests per day, but more than 100 million tests per day, and we're talking about keeping that tempo for a weeks.
Then, all it would take is for some people to have been in hiding or for people to travel from someplace else and a month or two later it's deja vu all over again.
Imagine the profit in selling all those test kits. It's like saying McDonalds could have made a lot more money if they only sold a few thousand burgers per year.
Oh, and one problem in producing more test kits is that one of the swab manufacturers was based in Italy.
uponit7771
(90,347 posts)crickets
(25,981 posts)It's been known for some time that testing and keeping tracking of the numbers is what we need to get a handle on this. Here's some hard scientific data to back it up. All of the "it's too late now; no point in testing!" noise may have been well-intentioned and meant to be comforting, but in the end is not helpful.
Tests, more tests, test everybody. To be in a situation where there aren't even enough tests for medical personnel and to have our government obviously doing little to nothing about it is the definition of criminal.