AI, STATS & COVID-19 Q&A

Prof. Roberto lUZZATI

1) Do you think it is likely to experience another big wave of COVID-19 cases in this phase 2?

It's impossible to make predictions but I believe there will be a second but smaller wave in Italy.

2) Are we doing enough testing?

We have to do much more testing and, especially, we must optimize contact tracing of positive individuals to find out positive asymptomatic individuals.

3) Today COVID-19 kidney damages has been reported. Do you foresee further pathological complications discovered in the next future?

It's possible that other complications will come out. However, we have to obtain more data from autopsy procedures. Now, we have a too little number of autopsies both in Italy and all over the world.

4) We hear a lot about the number of infected people, but what are the false positive and false negative rates of the SARS-Cov2 tests?

Regarding testing through PCR nasopharyngeal swabs, false positive tests are about zero and false negative around 30 % which is quite high.

pROF. LEONARDO eGIDI

1) In Lazio there has been no drop in ICU numbers; the other regions registered it instead. Have you looked into that? Do you have clues about this weird trend?

Thanks for your interesting question. The drop of ICU in Lazio started just two-three days after April 23th (last day for our Phase-1 analysis), following then a similar pattern to other regions. Even though a small delay in this decreasing trend, Lazio's behavior could be then thought generally close to that registered in other regions.