"From Monday we will experience five thousand do-it-yourself tests“, The announcement of the president of Veneto Luca Zaia. If the experimentation were to give the desired results, it would be a real revolution in the fight against the spread of coronavirus. It will be possible to avoid the queues at the ASL and at the same time have immediate answers on the epidemiological trend in real time.
Zaia specified: "You saw yesterday that WHO Professor Guerra said he had already seen the first DIY tests that will be distributed in pharmacies""Beneadds Zaia, when we said it we were given the naive. Now that WHO says it, I hope someone takes us seriously".
Guerra, guest on the television program - Otto e Mezzo - described them "...similar to a pregnancy test, the first single-use self-administered kits will be in pharmacies ".
In Veneto, the experimentation phase will be managed Roberto Rigoli, director of the Treviso microbiology and virology unit who explained: "This is a swab of the nasal passages to be placed in the reagent container. The experimentation will take place in duplicate: each do-it-yourself test will be validated by a molecular swab. To expand the experimentation we are considering working with many of the Venetian microbiologies, four or five, to have a large number of tests and more centers involved. These parameters significantly increase the reliability of the experimentation which will then be presented to the ISS for validation".
After taking the sample from the nose with the swab, it will be necessary to put it back in the container with the reagent and then through the bio-surveillance app "Zero Covid Veneto”The result is reported in order to make it accessible to the regional health system.
Rigoli also talks about another challenge, the one of identify the different strains of the virus, explaining: "I often go in person to swab the drive in because it is very important to ask the subjects if they are symptomatic or not and where they come from. Surely there are different strains of the virus and as many mutations: we hope to demonstrate this with the genetic sequence. With the Prophylactic Institute of the Tre Venezie, European reference center, we have agreed to send all the strains identified from February to today to be sequenced ".