Portugal and Mexico are going to restart the “Lolli” testing in schools to complete the second period of testing.
The EuCARE schools study was completed in Italy between November 2022 and June 2023. As planned, two periods of SARS-CoV-2 testing occurred with crossover of classes between control and intervention groups.
In Portugal and Mexico, the first testing period occurred between March 2023 and July 2023 and the second testing period will start now in September/October.
Coherent with the theme of this year’s UNESCO International Literacy Day celebrated today, 8th of September 2023, this project involves participants and their families and interventions to improve health education and health literacy.
In Portugal, in the first testing period, there were 574 participants – both students and teachers – and 604 pool tests were performed for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, of which 36 were positive (6%). Regarding the individual tests, 7.3% of the individuals tested were positive for SARS-CoV-2.
In Mexico, during the first period SARS-Cov-2 surveillance in schools, there were 573 participants tested a total of 27 classrooms. In total, 1.053 pool tests were performed. This strategy allowed to detect during the testing period 12 (2%) positive individuals within 9 pools and to avoid further infections in the classroom due to the isolation of positive cases.
In the second period of testing, we expect to further contribute to halting SARS-CoV-2 transmission chains in schools.
Besides the “Lolli Method”, psychological questionnaires will also continue to be applied and its results will be analyzed at the end of the data collection periods.
Stay tuned for more news and information to come!