Covid, follow-up: Tuscany accelerates. Japan Model Virus Hunter – Chronicle

Florence, November 18, 2020 – The Tuscany double. Bet on the recovery of tracking dedicate even more resources to it. Since 500 virus hunters the regional governor Eugenio Giani wants to go up to 1000. In the next few hours he will contact the rectors of the three Tuscan universities to expand the recruitment, with a call for applications, aimed at students of the last years of Medicine and the health professions, including the of Psychology, Pharmacy, Biology and, probably, Chemistry and Physics. Their work, after adequate training, will become part of the study plan, among the training activities.
The objective of Governor Giani and the regional adviser for the right to health, Simone Bezzini, after recovering the backlog – which has already been reduced by half, from 20 thousand cases to be tracked to 10,032 – it is possible to strengthen the three tracking stations following the example of Japan, Taiwan, but also from the city of New York that in order to avoid the spread of contagion, it has tracked down the 10,000 positive contact tracers for a population of 8 and a half million inhabitants. The South Korean model here in Italy is difficult to import due to a technological gap that cannot be filled in a short time.
The key is retrospective follow-up. The fundamental idea that helped Japan in the fight against Covid is the notion of transmission group. Health experts noticed very early that the disease spreads in a particular way. Although the coronavirus is highly contagious, its contagion is not uniform. About 80% of infected people do not transmit it to other people. A significant part of infections can be traced back to a small number of very high prevalence events. Equally surprisingly, a person with mild symptoms or even no symptoms could easily cause a very high prevalence event or group. As this virus spreads through a relatively small number of transmission chains at very high diffusion, if it is possible to isolate the chains or prevent their formation, the transmission slows down. The case of family infections is different. Once the virus has spread, replication is inevitable.
The approach of the retrospective follow-up it turned out to be very effective: operators try to determine the movements and interactions of positives during the period prior to infection. By mapping and cross-referencing those of other infected people, workers can identify the most common sources of infection – the people and places behind a cluster of infection. And there to intervene with specific tracing and buffers.
“Now the first challenge is to eliminate the delays. The ASL Toscana center has given itself ten days to resolve the 6,397 cases that remain pending, the Northwest has 3,518 and the Southeast, where the virus has affected less, is almost the same, there are only 127 left – explains Councilor Bezzini – We travel to a rhythm of disposition of about a thousand boxes a day ”.
So you think about the future. It is essential to strengthen the permanent staff of Asl’s Prevention departments, but also to have a group of properly trained students to take advantage of the follow-up. Why precisely the contact tracking it is at the base of coexistence with the virus, avoiding the overcrowding of the hospitals that we live in now and the total closures. of course, an important role lies in individual behavior. If in December we start the holidays again, no follow-up will be effective enough.