Quick swab during the holidays for those with other diseases Here is a safe Christmas, the Region’s plan for those over 65 Lorenza Castagneri The approximately 600,000 Piedmontese over 65 and with at least one chronic pathology will also find a gift from the Region under the tree . the Christmas package is safe, as the councilor for Covid research, Matteo Marnati, calls it. An initiative that aims to give more serene parties to those over 65 years of age and who have to live with diabetes, bronchopneumopathy, heart or neurological problems or even a tumor or other diseases: anyone with these characteristics and the fear of having entered contact with a suspected or confirmed case of Covid or feel the symptoms, you can ask the family doctor to carry out the rapid swab in one of the points set up by the Region for the entire Christmas period.
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The dates, yet to be confirmed, could be December 21-January 10. In this way – explains Marnati – he will be able to avoid turning to paid services, offered by pharmacies or private clinical centers. Where the tampon costs at least thirty euros. The initiative has no epidemiological significance. We want to use maximum caution with the citizens most at risk, to avoid serious consequences in the event of contagion, explains Pietro Presti, consultant of the Region and expert in innovation in healthcare. In Piedmont the over 65s are a quarter of the total population. There are about 1,100,000 of them and, as the Region explains, almost half of them have at least one chronic disease, others even more. In this second wave, Covid has reached its maximum incidence rate precisely in the 65-84 age group which, as the infectious disease specialist Giovanni Di Perri tells us, is also the one in which more deaths occur, the number of which in the Region still very high. Hence the choice to intervene.
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It is a way to reassure all those citizens who, on Christmas Eve or Christmas, meet more people, whose true health conditions are not known, and to whom the doubt arises of being infectedMarnati comments again. The request for a quick swab may come from citizens or from the family doctor, even in the absence of specific risk situations: it is sufficient that the client has the required characteristics. Meanwhile, a few days ago, the Piedmontese ASL have begun to subject even the asymptomatic contacts of coronavirus positive subjects to molecular swabs. Until November it had been so but then, with the case curve growing exponentially, the test was limited to contacts with symptoms only. Now that the infections have decreased again, however, we return to examine everyone. On the other hand, today the Region can process up to 100,000 swabs in public and private laboratories. And yesterday, speaking with the ASL, the councilor for health, Luigi Icardi, it was clear: The number of swabs to be analyzed must be adequate to monitor the circulation of the virus and prevent the third wave of the epidemic. Which could arrive as early as mid-January. Therefore the Region is also working on a safe school package in view of the return to class.
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16 December 2020 | 15:12
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