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Who has been in the last two weeks UK you should contact the local health company and get the swab done. In Lazio alone, 2,000 citizens returning from a trip to Britain must take the tests, as required by the order of the Ministry of Health to identify the presence of the English variant of Sars-CoV-2. Another 500, according to Governor Marco Marsilio, are in Abruzzo. In Lombardy 1,500 people from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are supposed to be swabs. Luca Zaia, according to Speranza, has signed his own ordinance.
The president of Veneto – a region where it is suspected that the unexpected increase in infections may have been caused by the spread of B.1.1.7, that is, the mutated virus that scares the United Kingdom and Europe due to the extraordinary speed of transmission – asked to labs that went further, to randomly sequence the swabs that tested positive in the past month (among those linked to trips to Britain). In this way it will be understood if the unexpected spread of the English variant accelerated the epidemic in Veneto.
According to the World Health Organization, a person infected with the new variant infects an average of 1.5 more people, compared to a reproduction rate of 1.1 for the other known variants in Britain. The new virus is also in Italy: patient 1 is a secret service agent. On Sunday, the Celio Military Polyclinic announced that a woman’s swab, which tested positive, had allowed the British variant to be sequenced. Yesterday it became known that it is a 42-year-old woman who works in Aise (external secret services), has mild symptoms and is in home isolation with her 45-year-old English partner, a former military assistant to a British officer. For now, the virus mutation has only been found in women, who have a high viral load. Meanwhile, Undersecretary Carlo Sibilia explained that the possibility of blocking flights from the Netherlands and Luxembourg is also being considered.
The problem is that today, when molecular swabs are performed, it is discovered if a person is positive, but it is not possible to know if the virus is the modified one. Before the stop at connections with the United Kingdom, tests were carried out at Italian airports for those who arrived from the other side of the Channel on Sunday. Although many passengers had cleaned themselves before boarding, numerous positives were found upon disembarking. One in Rome, seven in Naples, one in Trieste, three in Bari, just to name a few. In total there are about fifteen, but until the sequencing operations are completed in the laboratories, it will not be known if the virus found has the new variant.
At the end of the summit between the experts of the countries of the European Union, the ECDC (the agency for the control and prevention of diseases) has issued a series of recommendations: European laboratories must update the nucleotides used in the different diagnostic methods Sars-Cov-2 (molecular swabs and rapid antigen tests). For experts it is not necessary to close the Schengen borders, but flights from the United Kingdom are still blocked. According to the ECDC, the English variant has already been circulating in Europe (and beyond) for a month.. However, the search for the British variant is complicated. The Order of Hope, the same that blocked entry to Italy for those from Great Britain, is valid until January 6 and states: people who have stayed “in the previous fourteen days” in the United Kingdom are obliged to Immediately communicate “the successful entry into the national territory in the Prevention Department of the health company and undergo molecular or antigenic tests.” It is an obligation, but nobody is going to look for these people and, therefore, everything depends on the civic sense.
Does Italy have the means for a massive virus sequencing operation? Professor Carlo Federico Perno, professor of microbiology at UniCamillus and Bambino Gesù in Rome, explains: “It would be important to start with a massive sequencing operation to understand how much this variant has spread in our country. Italy can do it, the centers are there. However, funding is lacking. With the right resources, it can be done. ‘ According to Professor Massimo Ciccozzi, epidemiologist at the Campus Bio-Medico University, “now that we know, we can monitor this new variant. There are laboratories to enhance sequencing, we need a union of intentions.
Yesterday there was an apparent slowdown in the number of new cases in Italy, but in reality the positivity rate increased: 10,872 infected were found, but only 87,899 molecular swabs, so we are at 12.4 percent. There were 415 deaths, while the number of places occupied by Covid patients in hospitals decreased: 2,731 in intensive care and 25,145 in other departments. But even yesterday 161 people were admitted to intensive care and the flow, every day, seems constant.
Last updated: 07:20 © REPRODUCTION RESERVED
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