German-speaking Italian province conducts mass rapid test

BOLZANO, Italy (AP) — Citizens in Italy’s small Germany-speaking province of South Tyrol lined up Friday at schools, gymnasiums and pharmacies for rapid coronavirus tests, the largest testing initiative in the country to date and one that officials hope will speed the lifting of a partial locally imposed lockdown.

The Alpine province bordering Austria is following the example of Slovakia, which moved to slow infections and avoid a second lockdown by testing nearly two-thirds of its 5.5 million people in one weekend this month.

In South Tyrol, officials and family doctors are urging citizens in the province with a population of more than half a million to participate in the voluntary screening by showing up at nearly 200 testing sites. The goal is to test 350,000 people, or 80% of the population over age 5, by Sunday.

By comparison, Italy carries out some 200,000-250,000 molecular tests with nasal swabs a day.

“The comprehensive screening is a very big and perhaps the only, chance to get the risk of infection under control again,’’ the province’s top health official, Thomas Widmann, said this week.

Mass testing is seen as a way to isolate asymptomatic carriers of the new coronavirus, who are major spreaders in the resurgence that has seen confirmed cases spike throughout Europe beyond the numbers reported during the pandemic's first deadly peak in the spring.

The rapid antigen tests South Tyrol is using for its current drive are considered by many key to boosting testing capacity because they don’t require labs to generate results like the more reliable but costly and time-consuming nasal swabs. But experts warn that the 15-minute tests can produce false negatives and that using them effectively for screening requires frequent retesting.

India used the...