Boot authorities have announced plans to begin a comprehensive series of antibody tests that will allow tens of thousands to return to work and quit quarantine

• Italian doctors perform antibody test // Photo: AP

Italy's health authorities announced Tuesday that they plan to launch a large-scale antibody test to return as many people as possible to the Corona virus.

Authorities in the northern Lombardy province have already begun antibody testing among essential workers, with the goal of restoring as much as possible to work and, at least in part, restoring economic life in the province.

Meanwhile, only 3,000 tests have been conducted, mostly among medical staff and elderly care providers in the Northern Wento district, near the city of Venice. The rest of the northern counties are waiting for appropriate equipment to begin testing.

Milan-based pharmaceutical and medical equipment company Diasorin has announced it will begin to produce a new serological test that will allow antibodies to be found for the corona virus and can determine more precisely who holds the effective resistance to the virus.

"The product is being developed to address the need to identify parts of the population that have already been infected with the virus but have not been diagnosed as patients," the company statement said.

This is a blood test, which a number of companies in Italy are already producing and supplying to the local government, but not at the right pace to meet the Italian government's target of April, which is tens of thousands of tests. 132,000 people have been diagnosed with Corona in Italy, of which more than 16,000 have died as a result of the virus, the largest number of dead in any one country in the world to date.