The Italian health care system and swab testing

The Covid-19 epidemic has highlighted the fact that complex societies such as the one in Italy are able to maintain their balance only as long as all primary social needs are adequately met. Current living practices, in particular, have exposed the weaknesses of specific sectors, such as mobility, public spaces, the health care system and the welfare system. The present study reflects on the fragility of the health care system caused by an excessive fragmentation of policies and inconsistent regional setups, which have had repercussions on the administration of swab tests. We examine two regions, namely Lombardy and Veneto, where such differences stand out. In Lombardy, testing was limited and sluggish, which left the epidemic spread largely unchecked and forced Covid-19 testing to be carried out exclusively on patients with symptoms in hospitals. In addition to overburdening hospitals, this resulted in very limited swab-testing of the population: only the elderly. Veneto, on the other hand, adopted different swab-testing procedures, carried out not only among hospital patients but also on asymptomatic and non-hospitalized persons. This depends on the different organization and setup of the regional health care system. It follows that even a national-scale comparison of regional data in the three epidemic phases, which suggests an overall lowering of the average age for infected persons with great regional variations, ought to be taken with caution, given the dissimilar regional implementation of swab-testing.