When talking about easing the confinement measures, it’s necessary to ensure that the efforts and sacrifices from the last weeks haven’t been in vane and that the ‘road out’ of the crisis can start smoothly while guaranteeing safety to everyone.

Due to the shortage of screening tests, it’s really important in this new phase to have the necessary resources, especially when “baseline restrictions” start being reduced, so that we can avoid second waves of infections.

Massive testing is one of the most effective tools when trying to stop Covid-19. That’s why the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, in collaboration with IDIBAPS, IS-Global and Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), is working in the development of in-house tests. Those would allow to diagnose both the active infection and immunity. The final goal is conducting a massive testing of our population.

The project is spearheaded by Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, from its microbiology lab (Dr. Jordi Vila) and immunology lab (Dr. Manuel Juan), in collaboration with the following research institutes: IDIBAPS (Dr. Pere Santamaria), IS-Global (Dra. Carlota Dobaño) and the CRG (Dr. Carlo Carolis). This is possible thanks to the collaboration of the abovementioned organisations and people, by integrating research and clinical practice. It is also important to have the robot donated by the Covichain Robots initiative in this project.

The massive production of the tests in-house would avoid the risk of running out of reagents, and would favour easing of the confinement measures, while ensuring safety and second waves of infection. That way, the ‘road out’ of this crisis will be faster and safer.

The Hospital Clínic de Barcelona is running a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for this project here: https://www.clinicbarcelona.org/colabora/proyectos/diagnostico-covid-19