PADUA – «I am surprised by the media clamor over this story, but in substance we can say that there is no data to support an alleged excess of mortality linked to the use of rapid swabs». The professor points it out Angelo Dei Tos, president of the School of Medicine at the University of Padua regarding the clash between Senator Andrea Crisanti and the president of Veneto Luca Zaia. Dei Tos was the coordinator of the analysis laboratories of the University of Padua at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, in winter 2020.
«We must stop – he added – the narration of a clash between an enlightened science and a politics that does not listen. It is right that citizens know that all public health policy choices were made in Veneto by the Scientific Committee, of which Crisanti himself was a member together with teachers from Padua and Verona. The critical issue that triggered the controversy is more subtle: Crisanti claims that the decision to use rapid tests at a certain stage also led to an increase in mortality. He had formalized this in a work that was never published, and which two years later, when it was published in ‘Nature communications’, no longer reported this result, probably canceled by subsequent evaluations» he underlined, adding that «the data published in the Lancet and by Ministry of Health have instead shown that Veneto in Europe is the area with the lowest mortality from Covid and, with the exception of the province of Bolzano, the one that has made the most swabs ».
The decision to resort to antigen tests in parallel with the molecular ones therefore took place “because nowhere in the world – Dei Tos recalled – has it ever been possible to cover the needs of rear-end collisions. In Padua and throughout the region, at most, we managed to make 20-25 thousand swabs. And there were no tools and reagents. We were overwhelmed by a new emergency situation, in which we couldn’t imagine what to do, not even companies. It was a necessary choice, because it has exponentially increased the need to buffer the population. The lower specificity of rapid tests is a universally known fact, but can be compensated for by the frequency of the swab. These are elements to be taken into consideration, otherwise – he specified – we do not stick to the reality of the facts ». Finally, with regard to the Paduan investigation involving Professor Roberto Rigoli and the former general manager of Azienda Zero, Patrizia Simionato, Dei Tos recalls that «it has only the purpose of verifying the administrative regularity of the procedure for assigning the supply of tampons. That trial has nothing to do with the answer to the question raised by Crisanti. This has already been answered by other scientists, and the question – he concluded – is not reflected in his own data ».