By: Carlos Monteiro - CEO BioJam Group
It's been just over two years since the health authorities confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in Portugal: 2 March 2020, two months after news of the emergence of a new type of coronavirus in Wuhan. Around here, we've been going along and watching as one-off measures have been put forward in the form of Band-Aids, as news of new cases has emerged. Little was known about the virus that came from China, but there was certainty that it was important to break the growing chains of contagion.
Just looking at Italy was enough to realize what was in store for us. On March 9, Italy had become the second country with the most COVID-19 cases, after China. In less than a week, news emerged that the Saúde 24 hotline could collapse and there were casualties among health professionals.
It was at this point that I began to realize that we could be entering a spiral of madness that would only be accentuated by the lockdown, with the rush for masks, alcohol and medical support equipment that was becoming increasingly scarce. The numbers were not slow to echo in the news. People were dying! It was necessary to break chains of transmission. It was essential to test, identify and isolate sources of contagion quickly and effectively.
At the end of the year, rapid antigen tests were introduced to the market and became available in clinics and so-called 'drive-throughs'.

2021 brought us hope for a vaccine and the widespread availability of self-tests over-the-counter in pharmacies and supermarkets. Finally, the conditions were in place for mass testing of the population, supported by a network of testing in pharmacies and later in freely accessible mobile units. Testing had become a routine. We were aware that it was essential to do so.
Two years have passed for us, with countless variants of COVID-19 and 5 waves that preceded the current sixth wave that we are experiencing. The fatigue of the pandemic, the security of a vaccine and the hope for an endemic reality, lead me to believe that testing has never been as necessary as it is now.
Although the lethality associated with COVID-19 is reduced, the sixth wave brings with it a rapidly spreading variant that is more difficult to detect due to its naturally milder symptoms. It is known that the BA.2 lineage of the Omicron variant is already responsible for about 89% of infections in the country. It is true that the changes do not yet aggravate the impact of the infection, but they can lead to a loss of antibody effectiveness, whether these originate from the vaccine or from a previous infection. This is the reason for the occurrence of reinfections that are increasingly difficult to detect.
Today it is not to Italy that we have to look but to countries like South Korea which registered more than 600,000 cases a week ago. We are far from entering the final phase of the Pandemic and the lifting of restrictions and the easing of control measures is nothing more than "dropping to the ground" all the awareness-raising work carried out in order to instill in each of us the responsibility to protect those around us.
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