Rapid Screening Circuit of COVID 19 in Schools, Pilot Study

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by acute respiratory syndrome severe coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), emerged in Wuhan in December 2019 and has spread which poses a serious threat to public health. While 80% of the patients are asymptomatic or have a mild illness, 20% develop a serious illness. Predominant symptoms include fever, cough, and myalgias.

Most children have one mild or asymptomatic disease that can be resolved without medical attention and that, exceptionally, may progress to pneumonia and respiratory failure requiring hospitalization

Schools have started the course with strict protocols to prevent the transmission of SARS-Cov-2 among the members of the educational communities and thus avoid an uncontrollability of the epidemic. These protocols include scaled entrances in the centers and differentiated circulation to optimize compliance with social distance. They also include the creation of coexistence groups, the Ventilation of the spaces, hand washing, disinfection of furniture, and wearing a face mask. One key point in the prevention of infection is the rapid detection of infected individuals, their isolation immediate and quarantine, and screening of coexistence groups of positive cases. The diagnosis of Suspicious cases from both schools and other settings is done with a PCR, mostly in Primary Care Centers (PCC). This is causing an increased considerable volume of work for primary care centers.

In addition to the overload of the PCCs, the waiting time between sampling and PCR means that the person must remain at home until the result is obtained, with the negative impact that this means on the daily lives of students, teachers, and families. The use of a quick test performed on the own schools and with staff from the center itself trained to do this first screening would have three very relevant consequences for the system:

1. Speed up the diagnosis and minimize the waiting time between the presentation of symptoms and quarantine of the whole group (if positive)
2. Avoid a waiting time at home with the alteration - often unnecessary - of the day of students, their families, and school staff.
3. Decongest the PCCs, receiving only the cases that need confirmation