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Wednesday the Messenger of the Veneto reported that so far in Veneto the Immuni application, developed by the government to help track contacts during the coronavirus epidemic, has not been fully operational. The problem is that the ASL operators, which in Veneto are called AULSS, are not prepared and equipped to upload the codes of the application users who test positive on the swab on the appropriate platform, a procedure that automatically activates the reports. (anonymous). for other Immuni users who have been in contact with the positive in the previous days and who at that time, if they wish, can contact their ASL to get tested.
Veneto’s problem is at the regional level: in explaining the situation in a press release, in fact, the Region essentially says that it does not agree with Immuni’s definition of “close contact”, which has however been established by the Ministry of Health. In practice, the Region argues that what the application intends as a contact, a person who has been less than two meters away for at least 15 minutes, is too strict and different from the one applied by ASL in its usual epidemiological investigations.
In essence, says Veneto: what Immuni records as contact could have occurred with the masks, with a possible protective barrier or in the open air, and therefore would not be considered such according to the protocols of the regional ASL. So until now in Veneto who, having tested positive, has tried to report their immune code to ASL, has not been able to do so.
Veneto said however that “in a few days” the service will be activated. And he says that already in June, that is, since Immuni was active, he had reported this problem to the Ministry of Health, asking that a different protocol be agreed. Veneto also states that there are “many regions” that are “ready for activation” but that “are awaiting the definition of the aforementioned protocol.” Thus hinting at the doubt that in other Italian regions the ASL did not load the codes.
– Read also: What happens when a notification arrives from Immuni?
the Send could not verify this condition. Asked for more details, a spokesman for the Veneto region spoke of “Tuscany and Lombardy.” But on the basis of the data collected between June and September by Immuni in both regions there are reports: in Tuscany 21, in Lombardy even 112, more than a third of the national total. The Ministry of Health has made it known that there are no other regions with the same problem as Veneto, but has not provided more accurate and timely information on the reports received from the different regions and on any problems. However, he confirmed that meetings are being held with the Regions.
(Immune)
From the data provided by Immuni, it can be seen that between June and September in Veneto only one case of positivity was registered by the users of the application: a strange figure, given that more than half a million people downloaded it in the region in late September. people, and that infections are among the highest in Italy. Discharges are more or less the same in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, where the reports were respectively 21 and 23.
(immune)
Contacting four different Venetian AULSS by telephone to request information on the procedure to follow to report their positivity through Immuni, the general response received from Send I was confused and generally off guard. A prevention department explicitly said that the report should not be made, due to the interpretation of the definition of contact explained in the regional statement. Another AULSS said that she had read in the newspaper that the app is not operational in Veneto.
However, the problems with the implementation of the Immuni protocols by local health authorities do not appear to be limited to Veneto. As for the numbers, Immuni was little used in the summer, there were few reports, although in June the Ministry of Health had provided instructions on how to manage the reports and codes.
Several regional governments seem not to have attached much importance to promoting the application and training of ASL operators. There have been several cases of regional governors – all of the center-right – who have expressed their distrust of Immune: Luca Zaia from Veneto had said he had not downloaded it, as well as Nello Musumeci from Sicilia and Francesco Acquaroli de Marche, who also said that if not all are useless. In Piedmont, the working group that advised Alberto Cirio had decided not to encourage its use. the Daily occurrence Today reports a statement from the director of Milan ATS Vincenzo Di Micheli according to which Immuni would be “more a headache than a resource”, explaining that “the application requires a series of cumbersome steps that are a waste of time”.
With the increase in infections that we have been witnessing for weeks, the epidemiological investigation operations carried out by the Prevention and Hygiene Departments of the Italian ASLs are becoming increasingly difficult. For each positive person, it is estimated that at least a dozen close contacts will be traced, contacted, and followed from an isolation and protection standpoint. After a certain number of infections, ASLs can no longer control the contact tracking, many positive contacts escape monitoring and outbreaks do not stop in time.
Immuni was developed precisely to help these types of operations, and also allows reaching people who have been in contact with positives that in many cases would escape normal epidemiological investigations. So far it has been downloaded by 8.7 million people, one million of them in the last week alone. Its effectiveness is closely linked to the number of users, and for months the government and virologists have insisted on the importance of it being downloaded and activated by as many people as possible.
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