"The
National Swabs Plan
that the infectious disease expert Andrea Crisanti, of the University of Padua, had proposed to the government in August last year and which" proposed to equip Italy with a network of fixed and mobile to
increase
the capacity to carry out swabs
to 400,000
and eliminate regional differences with the aim of consolidating the results of the lockdown and keeping infections at a low level that does not interfere with the quality of life and production activities ".
Crisanti himself writes this in
Lettera150
, the journal of the relative think tank which includes about 250 academics from different disciplines, including Crisanti himself.
In the same document, the expert notes that it
is urgent in Italy to create an active surveillance system for Covid-19 cases in
order not to damage the economy.
With the restrictive measures of the last Dpcm, he writes, "one persists in the error of not asking how, once the contagion is reduced with progressively restrictive measures, it is possible to keep it at low levels".
Furthermore, "the failure to answer this question will condemn us to a swing of restrictive measures and a return to normality that will have disastrous effects on the economy, education and social life".
"The best investment to support the economy and improve the quality of life that can and must be done now is to create an active surveillance system capable of making us live with low levels of viral transmission", writes Crisanti on Lettera. 150. "The press of news on the number of contagions in continuous increase - we read again - brings me back to the month of August, when I shared analysis of future scenarios with representatives of the government that led me to formulate a plan of national surveillance then brought to the attention of the competent ministers and the CTS. The goal was to equip Italy with an active surveillance system capable of blocking the outbreaks of transmission of Sars Covid2 ", keeping the circulation of the virus at low levels.
"The rationale of this proposal - writes Crisanti - was based on the notion that the current methods of contact tracing are laborious, difficult to scale and easily saturated, vice versa, the approach used in the town of Vo and then applied in many other situations also in Italy is extremely efficient and with lasting effects ".
The expert also notes that "each of us lives in a three-dimensional network of relationships whose plans can be school, work, neighbors, friends and relatives with both horizontal and vertical interactions. When one identifies a infected person, if you test all those who are part of this space of relationships, the origin of the infection is very likely to be found in this space of relationships, the one who transmitted the infection as well as those who eventually became infected by blocking this way the transmission chain (network testing) ".
Citing the example of China, which "a few days ago, to eliminate an outbreak of 10 cases, carried out 10 million swabs in one day", Crisanti finally notes that "the competitive advantage of an economy today mainly passes through the protection of public health ".
