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Veneto doctors oppose the Region’s decision to stop subjecting health personnel in service to periodic molecular tests scheduled until October, having favored screening with less reliable rapid tests. On Christmas Eve a beware, prepared by the lawyer Federico Pagetta of Padua and signed by Adriano Benazzato, regional secretary Anaao Assomed of Veneto, it was sent to the general directors of the nine Ulss, the university hospitals of Padua and Verona, and the Veneto Cancer Institute of Padua. For information it was sent to the president of the regional council, Luca zaia, Councilor for Health Manuela Lanzarote and the general manager of Azienda Zero, a company that manages health establishments. It is a real accusation, with an invitation to retract a resolution of the regional council, to protect oneself -in self-defense- from possible revenge actions for having left the medical and nursing personnel without the anti-Covid constituted by the molecular buffer . It is an intervention at the heart of the tirade about the reliability of tampons, given that the rapids have become a source of pride for the Veneto, but caused alarm among front-line personnel.
Since November 2020, these health authorities have unexpectedly decided to interrupt the control and monitoring of the circulation of the virus by regularly carrying out molecular tests on health personnel. This type has been ‘replaced’ by the rapid test and only in the event of a positive reaction to the reagent, the molecular test will be carried out. “This is the premise. It is explained that a regional resolution of October 21 (published in the Official Gazette of the region on October 31) updated the anti-Covid plan, establishing this type of “reference” for health personnel, “unless otherwise specified.” But on what basis? Secretary Benazzato cites the response received from the director of a health company according to which “the Region has specified that the choice of these tests is based on on what is indicated by the main international organizations (WHO, Ecdc, Cdc and Ministry of Health Circular No. 31400 of October 29, 2020) “, in line with” a Provisional Technical Note from the Ministry of Health and the Higher Institute of Health “.
The warning “does not deny the coercive effect of the resolution of the Regional Council against the sanitary companies”, but highlights that “from the legal point of view only the latter, as an employer will be called to answer for the violation of the regulatory provisions intended to protect the health, safety and security of their employees”.
Benazzato continues: “The Giunta resolution distorts and violates the meaning and the letter of the ministerial circular and the provisional technical note to confirm the choice of rapid tests only.” In fact, “the circular of September 29 refers to the use of rapid antigen tests ‘with special attention to the school context’, a context very different from that of health structures that, as clarified in a recent study, also co- signed by the head of the Prevention Department of the Veneto Region, for the personnel who work there it presents a risk of contagion four times greater than that of the population residing in Veneto. ”The ministerial circular establishes that the molecular test”it is currently the most reliable for diagnosis“While the antigen, even if it gives results in just 15 minutes,” has a lower sensitivity and specificity resulting in possibility of false negative and false positive resultsFor this reason, the ministry had confirmed the usefulness of this test “in the school environment.” Anaao Assomed has a good game to report: “The exclusive use of the rapid test in a health context is something else. Reporting false negatives among healthcare professionals carries huge risks because, as the cases of the Nembro and Alzano hospitals have shown, it ends up acting as a trigger for the proliferation of infections among those who represent the ‘front line’ in the fight against the virus “.
The same Ecdc (European Center for the Prevention and Control of Diseases) indicates the molecular test as the “first option”, the rapid test as the “alternative solution”. The same goes for the Ministry of Health. According to Anaao Assomed, therefore, the resolution of the Veneto Region would be “illegitimate”, in addition to being adopted in October, in a less serious epidemiological context than the current one. “Since the adoption of the resolution, the number of cases has more than doubled, as have deaths and the number of hospitalizations from Covid and the number of intensive care units occupied by an exponential increase.” Additionally, the Covid-2019 regional Scientific Committee had questioned the validity of the rapid tests in November. That’s why the warning ends: a protection of worker safety in the workplace – with the request to general managers “in the same public interest, to remedy in self-defense the regional and corporate choice (illegitimate and inappropriate) to alternatively use only rapid antigenic tests by restoring molecular tests as a ‘first choice’ for staff of health monitoring “.
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