University of East Anglia, School of International Development, Norwich, UK.
World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Eur J Public Health. 2021 Oct 11;31(4):913-917. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckab064.
In response to the epidemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a few countries have rolled out widespread testing of the population, while in other countries only people requiring hospital admission are being screened. After an extensive testing strategy during the initial few weeks in the early phase of the epidemic, the Italian Ministry of Health made its testing policy more stringent. In this study we assess the contribution of the testing policy containing the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in Northern Italy.
The analysis is focused on the evolution of the epidemic and related health intervention in four regions where ∼80% of the national death toll due to COVID-19 has occurred. The assumed under-estimation of asymptomatic cases has led us to make use of the number of deaths due to the epidemic to analyze the effectiveness of testing. The analysis is conducted through an autoregressive time-series approach where we use official data from the Ministry of Health.
The results of the analysis confirm a negative relationship between the number of tests carried out and the progression of the epidemic. In particular, results reveal that the tests are particularly effective in breaking the chain of transmission when they are implemented at the early stages of the spread of the virus.
A large-scale testing policy is recommended as a critical contribution to effectively contain the epidemic. In addition, it is highly recommended to set up all necessary measures to enable the quick scale-up of testing capacity whenever required.
为应对 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）疫情，一些国家对人群进行了广泛检测，而其他国家则只对需要住院的人进行筛查。在疫情早期的最初几周进行了广泛的检测策略后，意大利卫生部使检测政策更加严格。在本研究中，我们评估了包含 COVID-19 疫情在意大利北部传播的检测政策的贡献。
分析重点是在四个地区的疫情演变和相关卫生干预措施，这四个地区发生了全国约 80%的 COVID-19 死亡。由于假设对无症状病例的低估，我们利用因疫情导致的死亡人数来分析检测的效果。分析通过自回归时间序列方法进行，我们使用卫生部的官方数据。
分析结果证实了检测次数与疫情进展之间存在负相关关系。特别是，结果表明，当在病毒传播的早期阶段实施检测时，检测对于打破传播链特别有效。
建议实施大规模检测政策，作为有效遏制疫情的重要贡献。此外，强烈建议在需要时采取一切必要措施，以便能够快速扩大检测能力。
