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“At the beginning of the pandemic, the amount of tests was limited, as was the capacity of countries, and therefore only the most serious patients and patients traveling to hospitals were more tested, but now many countries have expanded [o número] They’re testing and they’re examining people with mild symptoms, or even no symptoms, and they’re finding cases, ”says ECDC’s deputy director of disease programs.
“In some countries, this [aumento] it is related to testing because more and more people are testing ”, Piotr Kramarz reinforces.
The official notes that “the approach to testing differs greatly from country to country,” so ECDC is “preparing guidelines for a common approach to testing, which suggests how countries should assess their population.”
In the latest risk assessment report, released by this European center in early August, Portugal was among the EU countries that performed the most tests on the population, with an average of 923.3 tests per 100,000 inhabitants, just behind Luxembourg. , which introduced a mass testing strategy, Denmark, Malta, Cyprus, Austria and Ireland.
But the increase in the number of tests is not the only indicator evaluated by the ECDC, according to Piotr Kramarz, who assures that there are “resurgences [na Europa] looking at other indicators ”, such as active outbreaks or community transmission.
Therefore, the expert urged countries to continue “detecting cases quickly and tracing contacts.”
“In this phase of the pandemic, we recommend that all people who have symptoms compatible with Covid-19 get tested. And if countries are able to test all these symptomatic people, they may also consider testing asymptomatic people, who despite not having symptoms may have been in contact [com alguém infetado]”, He appealed in the interview to Lusa.
Based in Sweden, ECDC’s mission is to help European countries respond to disease outbreaks.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 832,000 deaths and infected more than 24.5 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
