ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: In the coronavirus disease 2019 era, debate around the risk of contagion in school is intense in Italy. The Department of Welfare and Health of Florence promoted a screening campaign with rapid antigen tests for all students and school personnel. The aim of this study was to assess the circulation of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the school setting by means of mass screening in every primary and middle school in Florence. METHODS: All students and school personnel at primary and middle schools in Florence were asked to take part. The campaign started on 16 November 2020 and was completed on 12 February 2021. If a subject had a positive result on rapid antigen testing, a molecular test was performed to confirm the result. RESULTS: In total, 18,414 subjects were tested: 15,233 students (82.7%) and 3181 school personnel (17.3%). The rapid antigen test gave a positive result in 27 cases (0.15%). Of these, only 14 tests were confirmed to be positive on molecular testing. These results show a very low number of cases of SARS-CoV-2 among the study subjects (0.08%). CONCLUSIONS: These results show that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the school setting was low in Florence during the screening period.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , Italy/epidemiology , Mass Screening , SARS-CoV-2 , Schools , StudentsABSTRACT
Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 represents an effective and safe tool to protect the population against the disease; however, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy could be a major barrier to achieving herd immunity. Despite the severity of the current pandemic, the population's intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is still not clear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19 among a convenience sample of the general population resident in Italy and the factors associated with hesitancy and acceptance of the vaccine in the context of the current pandemic before the rolling out of COVID-19 vaccines. An anonymous online survey was diffused among a general adult population living in Italy. Participants aged 18 or older and living in Italy were considered eligible. Incomplete questionnaires were excluded. Overall, 7605 valid questionnaires were collected. Most of the participants (81.9%) were inclined to get vaccinated; male sex (OR 1.38, 95% CI 1.12-1.71), a high level of trust in institutions (OR 3.93, 95% CI 2.04-7.83), and personal beliefs about high safety of COVID-19 vaccines (OR 56.33, 95% CI 31.57-105.87) were found to be among the significant predictors of COVID-19 acceptance. These data could help design larger studies to address the problem of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the current pandemic.
ABSTRACT
During the Covid-19 pandemic, risk communication has often been ineffective, and from this perspective "fake news" has found fertile ground, both as a cause and a consequence of it. The aim of this study is to measure how much "fake news" and corresponding verified news have circulated in Italy in the period between 31 December 2019 and 30 April 2020, and to estimate the quality of informal and formal communication. We used the BuzzSumo application to gather the most shared links on the Internet related to the pandemic in Italy, using keywords chosen according to the most frequent "fake news" during that period. For each research we noted the numbers of "fake news" articles and science-based news articles, as well as the number of engagements. We reviewed 2102 articles. Links that contained fake news were shared 2,352,585 times, accounting for 23.1% of the total shares of all the articles reviewed. Our study throws light on the "fake news" phenomenon in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. A quantitative assessment is fundamental in order to understand the impact of false information and to define political and technical interventions in health communication. Starting from this evaluation, health literacy should be improved by means of specific interventions in order to improve informal and formal communication.