There is talk of 10 schools that will lead the way in sample salivary tests to keep infections among Tuscan students.
There are 3,300 children (between 6 and 14 years old) who will kick off the salivary test to the students. Students will be enrolled through the informed consent of the families, as they are minors.
The sampling will be carried out by the health personnel of the prevention departments of the three Tuscan ASLs within the selected classes (one school per province).
The samples will be collected directly at the school and then transported to the analysis laboratories. At a later time, the parents will collect the salivary samples.
Salivary tests will be provided by the facility of the Figliuolo emergency commissioner and will be repeated every 15 days, in order to keep any infections and outbreaks among the boys under control.
The screening project will go on until at the end of the lessons (June 2022) and may also involve several institutes in the same province.
The first institutes chosen by the Department of Health, together with the regional school office, are the following:
- Petrarca Comprehensive Institute of Montevarchi (Arezzo)
- Compagni Carducci State Comprehensive Institute (Florence)
- Niccolò Pisano Comprehensive Institute (Marina di Pisa)
- Comprehensive Institute Grosseto 5 (Grosseto)
- Comprehensive Institute G. Ungaretti (Lucca)
- Comprehensive Institute Don Roberto Angeli (Livorno)
- Don Milani Comprehensive Institute (Massa)
- Montalcini Comprehensive Institute (Pescia)
- Convenient Comprehensive Institute (Prato)
- Comprehensive Institute Pier Andrea Mattioli (Siena)
Why the need to keep the Covid situation under control in compulsory schools? From the beginning of 2021 to today, 25,310 Tuscan children and young people from zero to 18 years have been infected with the new coronavirus and, of these, 5,984 they attended elementary schools and 4,703 the averages.
