Too many swabs, labs in trouble: “We are overbooked” – Chronicle

Milan, September 12, 2020 – They start to have problems laboratories Italians specialized inswab analysis: if during the whole month of July and until August 15 they performed less than 50,000 swab tests per day for the Sars.CoV-2 virus, currently the average has risen to 70,000 per day, with peaks of 90,000. With this in mind I new quick tests The arrival could bring relief, but it could also be the source of more trouble.

“We are overbooked, under pressure and we have to say no to many requests,” he told Ansa. the virologist Francesco Broccolo, Dell ‘University of Milan Bicocca and director of Cerba Laboratory in Milan. “This is the situation we are experiencing in the North, but it is probably true for all Italian laboratories, public and private, that report to the regional crisis units,” he added. The number of analyzes performed is increasing, “but we did not reach the values ​​that we would like to achieve,” said the virologist, referring to the approximately 400,000 tampons per day that some experts have indicated as necessary to obtain a good traceability of the cases. “Basically – he continued – we are a a quarter of production we must achieve “.