Covid, the government’s autumn plan: 200 thousand tampons a day and super machinery

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Two hundred thousand tampons a day, double today, and the massive use of quick tests at airports, schools, health facilities, as well as for public services and law enforcement agencies. But also the purchase of super-pooling machines able to process this mountain of exams seven times faster than today. These are the three pillars of the government’s “autumn campaign” against Covid that Il Sole 24 ore can anticipate: the plan is ready and on the table of the emergency commissioner. Domenico Arcuri who is filing it these days before sending it to the Scientific Technical Committee for validation.

This “Covid 19 prevention and containment plan” aims to exponentially increase our firepower in testing suspected cases, trace contacts and screen now that will be necessary between the reopening of schools and the arrival of the seasonal flu that last year affected almost 8 million Italians and that usually presents symptoms similar to those of Covid. Once the plan is validated, we will begin with requests for public offers for the purchase of machinery and new tests.

Give 46mila to 200mila tamponi

If at the beginning of the emergency – he recalls the plan – there was an average of 46 thousand daily swabs in the last week, it has also reached 100,000 tests (yesterday 94 thousand). Now the goal of the plan is to reach 200mila buffers, a figure that is expected to be reached in November. So far, 13 million swabs and 9 million kits and reagents and 44 machines have been distributed to the Regions by the commissioner structure led by Arcuri. These figures that have allowed Italy to exceed the threshold of 100,000 swabs in recent days make it one of the countries that tests the most.

But now the goal is to raise the bar, as Health Minister Roberto Speranza himself had anticipated in recent days: «In recent weeks we have made an enormous effort. Italy can now do more than 100,000 tampons a day and we will increase even more significantly in the coming weeks, especially given the risks we are taking by opening other businesses from school. And I think – said Speranza – that in this phase of coexistence, in the autumn and winter months we will need to try as much as possible ”.

After all, Italy with this autumn tampon plan is not going alone, given that, for example, France and England have taken the carpet testing path for several days. Beyond the Alps, a million a week is now being made against the 620 thousand Italians registered in the last 7 days by the Bulletin of the Ministry of Health. Even in England we now come to peaks of 150 thousand-175 thousand swabs per day, but London says it will do more. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced up to 500,000 a day starting next October.