Pediatricians on the medical certificate at school: without a tampon “it is useless or harmful”

The medical certificate to return to class without the swab test is “useless and harmful.” Paolo Biasci, president of the Italian Federation of Pediatricians, Fimp, is convinced of this and thus responds to the request of the National Association of Deans to make mandatory, after an absence of more than 5 days, the presentation of the medical certificate of readmission to the school. For Biasci “it is a bureaucratic requirement that has already been annulled in many regions and that could complicate the work of doctors and the lives of families.” “Do we want to limit access to avoid infection and then crowd the studios in search of a document that does not guarantee anything?” Biasci asks. “The request for the reintroduction of the mandatory medical certificate for returning to school has no scientific basis and contradicts the recommendations promoted so far to contain the epidemic. The school world must want with us the measures that allow children to attend classes safely. And the reintroduction of the certificate, which is based solely on the evaluation of clinical conditions, would instead offer a false certainty about the contagious conditions of the students. “

Biasci proposes “to adhere to the norms of the last Dpcm” and to follow “the indicated care path that foresees the execution of the nasopharyngeal swab in all the main and most frequent conditions that cause the absence of school communities. Management of organizational aspects, for which has been done very little in recent months. ”“ We now have a proven telephone triage system, possibly associated with video consultation, says Biasci, which allows us to identify all suspected cases of Covid infection. For safe school attendance, we need a swab report as quickly as possible, in order to draw up a certificate that allows them to return to school. Do we want to re-agglomerate the studies of family pediatricians with unnecessary access to bureaucratic compliance that was canceled a long time ago, precisely because it has no scientific value and does not allow to exclude contagious? How to certify with certainty the non-contagiousness of a patient without first having performed the only test validated to date to resolve the diagnosis? ”. “Rather – Biasci concludes – let’s focus on the organizational aspects of managing the epidemic. We are doing our part, but it is not possible to have to wait 4-5 days and even longer for the result of the nasopharyngeal swab for Covid when, yes the patient himself goes to the emergency room, the answer arrives in 4 hours. We try to reduce the disparity between hospitalization schedules and the territory. The first to benefit will be the children and their families “.