Italy is trying to stop the virus from entering major airports.
Italy is fighting to prevent a second wave of coronavirus and to stop imported cases, which are a large proportion of new infections, several major airports are already screening passengers arriving from countries considered “at risk”.
SPAIN, GREECE, CROATIA AND MALTA, COUNTRIES AT RISK
Last Wednesday it was decreed that people arriving from Spain, Greece, Croatia and Malta must undergo these tests within the first 48 hours of entering Italy, if they do not bring a negative result in a test carried out in the previous 72 hours, but for several days chaos has reigned as the air terminals were not prepared.
At Fiumicino airport, the largest in Rome and one of the main gateways to Italy, today for the second day in a row the test continued to be carried out on travellers from these four countries, in the area of almost one thousand square metres set aside for arrivals at Terminal 3.
Some 200 or 300 people waited in a queue to register their data before being called to another queue to enter the cabins where some 120 toilets today perform the tests in total privacy.
A manager warned passengers to respect distance measures and not to crowd in.
“We’ve come here just like on the first plane and we’ve had to wait in line a little bit, but it looks like the crowd behind us is going to have to wait a lot longer,” said Efe Martín, a young man who landed this morning from Barcelona.
He considers that it is “something normal” to have to do these tests – “there is a little bit of paranoia everywhere” – and although he would have preferred to bring the test done from Spain that was not possible.
“The regulations came in on Thursday and the idea was to come with a PCR that was negative, but there wasn’t time, the information was very contradictory, we didn’t know very well what was going to happen, and to find out that they were doing it here because it’s not bad”, he assures.
He also didn’t have to wait for the result of the RCP, because they give it quickly after the test.
Less luck has been had by the Italian Flavio, who took about two hours to do the test on his arrival from his holiday in Ibiza.
And the Spanish-Italian Alessandra, who came to see her family and was looking forward to leaving the airport: “It’s 10.30, the flight landed at 9, so it took a while. I think it’s good that they’re doing it, which is annoying, annoying, of course, but there should be some kind of filter” to speed up, she tells Efe.
RAPID AND MOLECULAR TESTS
The area managed by Aeroporti di Roma and operated by the Ministry of Health and the Lazio Region has a capacity of up to 480 passengers at a time.
The Covid test area at the smallest Roman airport in Ciampino was also scheduled to be activated this Monday.
Alessio D’Amato, the Health Councillor of the Lazio Region, whose capital is Rome, explained to journalists that 15,000 so-called rapid tests had been consigned to each of the two Roman airports.
“This allows us to speed up the procedures and also to have a result in a few minutes. Yesterday, having a limited number of rapid tests, we alternated them with the classic ones. Now we do the rapid test, which has a very high level of reliability, and in the event that we find a positive result, we then do the classic molecular test, which is the one that gives absolute certainty of the diagnosis,” he said.
ABOUT HALF OF THE NEW INFECTIONS ARE IMPORTED
Even though Italy has far fewer new infections than surrounding countries, it doesn’t want to let down its guard, and the data indicates that in regions where there has been strong growth in recent days – such as Lazio or Veneto (the latter has its capital in Venice) – half of it is imported.
“For now, Italy is fortunately still in a privileged position, although the number of cases is increasing, so much so that in one week we have gone from 200-300 daily to more than 600,” said the director of the Superior Council of Health, Franco Locatelli.
At the airports of Venice and Verona (both in the Veneto region), several thousand tests have already been carried out in the last few days, but at the two airports in Milan (Lombardy), Malpensa and Linate, this system has not yet been activated.
CHAOS IN THE PREVIOUS DAYS
Although the ordinance relating to these four countries came into force on Thursday 13, it was only yesterday, Sunday, that the procedure was activated at Fiumicino airport, so that passengers arriving in Rome on those three days found themselves in a kind of limbo’.
When they landed they had to register their details and the police told them that they had to contact the local health authority to carry out the PCR test and be placed in home isolation until they got a negative result.
During the weekend, very long queues of up to eight hours were formed at the drive-in points installed in several hospitals to perform these PCR tests, as verified by Efe.
By Virginia Hebrero – EFE
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