Understanding how the coronavirus spread during the first and second waves can represent an excellent basis for predicting what the future trend of the pandemic will be and, if necessary, studying strategies for its deceleration. This is the starting point of a study focused on Lombardy - but which can be extended to other regions - carried out by the research group of the Alta Scuola Politecnica and which includes Christian Cancedda , Alessio Cappellato (as a science engineer of the Turin Polytechnic ), Federico Capello (mathematical engineer of the Milan Polytechnic), Luigi Maninchedda and Leonardo Meacci (management engineer of the Milan Polytechnic) and Claudia Salerni (biomedical engineer of the Milan Polytechnic). A job, called Covid @ Lombardy, in which the two young Sardinians were engaged from July 2020 to September 2021 as part of the Alta Scuola Politecnica, a multidisciplinary training project between the Politecnico di Milano and that of Turin.
Christian Cancedda , 23 years old from Carbonia, has always had a passion for new technologies, which has been strengthened with his studies: in Turin he completed both his bachelor's and master's degrees and is now finishing his thesis on autonomous driving systems. He tells L'Unione Sarda what his role in the Covid project was.
"It all started with a proposal by Professor Stefano Ceri, full professor of Database Systems at the Politecnico di Milano, relating to the spread of viruses - all, in this specific case Covid - not only internal, such as sequencing, and on how to use data at a higher level to understand what happens in the pathways of contagion by considering the characteristics of a region to investigate whether these have any weight ".
Why has Lombardy been considered?
“Because this region presented anomalous characteristics, at the end of the first wave of the pandemic it had something like 40 percent of coronavirus cases in Italy. So we wondered what was special about it and if there was a specific reason. This is the meaning of using new technologies: understanding what happens and why there have been certain results ".
How did you work?
"Being a new phenomenon - at the time very little was known about diffusion, for example if it was only by air or even through surfaces - we had to investigate through new ways".
What did you do?
“I created experiments that could help understand and express the reasons for the infections, therefore the design and definition of the analysis techniques”.
How did the study develop?
"First we identified macro areas on a Eurostat basis - health, population, primary sector, education, mobility and economy - then we moved on to the exploration of Istat data on the variables of interest by examining the most recent research literature on the understanding of viruses and on diffusion in one sector. Finally, everything had to be put together in a puzzle to reach an overall vision where each piece must match the others ”.
What conclusions did you come to?
“Lombardy was the most affected region due to a number of factors: the high number of average hours worked by people, because obviously the more they grow, the greater the risk; the number of students present in the training facilities, an element that increases contacts, and also mobility; then the increase in life expectancy, the older population corresponds to an increase in risk ".
Sardinia, in the graph you have created, is colored yellow, a reduced risk, like few other regions in southern Italy.
“Yes, because in terms of life expectancy he obtained high indices but for example on other conditions he did not meet the standard, fortunately for him in the perspective of contagion. For example, let's talk about the number of hours worked ".
What strategies have proved most effective to combat the spread of the virus?
“By studying the use of non-pharmacological control policies, we focused on how they have changed the situation. For example: if everyone had been put to work remotely, would anything have changed? We actually noticed that one of the most effective policies, from the coronaNet data, proved to be a winner: the more people operated remotely, the more there was a slowdown. A decrease in the number of hours worked in offices and the spread of the virus ".
How does it work in practice?
"With a report, we compare the data by observing what happens 'x' days after (up to 21) the implementation of the policy, and identify the one that was the most effective in that period".
Other strategies?
“The one that concerns students, with distance learning activities: fewer contacts, less diffusion. Indeed, an element on which the policies of many states, including Italy, have focused ”.
Who and what are these data for?
“The study is useful not only for technical knowledge in the scientific field but also as a starting point for other insights. It is also available to everyone. Later we will bring the system that produces the analysis on a CERN platform that will allow the results to be reproduced in a simple way. In science the sources are important but also the reproducibility of the study ".
Could Sardinia use the same methodology?
“It would be interesting to refine this work with specific regions and see how they perform. For the Island it could be repeated by looking at mobility, which was done by one of our supervisor. It comes to me specifically when focusing on transport. For us, one of the limits was that of not being able to obtain certain data such as those of the frequentation of motorways, they exist but are private, or telephone providers. To arrive or depart from Sardinia you cannot take a car and reach the mainland, but it is essential to travel on ships or planes, so numbers and routes that are easier to register ".
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Luigi Maninchedda , like his colleague Cancedda, was also involved in the study on Covid. Born in Sassari in 1997, when he was still a child the family moved to Veneto for work reasons. "I have some memories of my beautiful homeland , and I return regularly because everything is incredibly unique there".
After the scientific maturity, he enrolled at the Politecnico di Milano and will soon discuss his thesis on a case study on how Italian companies in the manufacturing sector can increase the use of so-called 4.0 tools.
He entered the Alta Scuola Politecnica after passing a selection for the choice of 150 students. "It includes extra courses and multidisciplinary theses among those with a different background, and it was in this context that the Covid project proposed by the researcher and virologist Ilaria Capua was born".
How did you organize yourself?
“The study is divided into two parts: creating a database with information from public databases to compare the characteristics of each region with coronavirus cases, and then determining the correlation between regions that are more active than those with different movements. In conclusion: the exchange of contacts between the people at the base of the diffusion has been confirmed, I underline on a scientific level and with a mathematical model ”.
Final result?
"It is obviously not 100% exhaustive, we would have to convince other bodies to collect and organize the data in the best possible way but it is an expensive process that does not bear fruit in the short term".
What was his role?
“Coordinate the various activities, supervise, collect the parts carried out by other colleagues. Something that, however, is very close to the work I already do: I am a project controller, I plan large projects for an engineering company ".
How did Italy fare in your studio?
"It is one of the countries in which the amount of restrictive measures was greater than in other states, but it was not possible to go into the details of the various regions because the data was highly aggregated, so we saw the trend of the curve without further investigation" .
Do you have to go to Milan or Turin to reach certain levels of preparation?
“Those are the excellences, and those opportunities cannot be offered by other realities in our country”.
What would you say to young people like you who wanted to pursue the dream of working in the engineering world of the future?
“Not to give up, not to give up even in the face of economic difficulties because many times these are what stop us. There are indeed many ways to overcome these obstacles. If you are a good person and you want to do something, opportunities come. As well as the satisfactions, if you commit yourself seriously. Never say: I can't do it, I can't afford it; always follow your determination ”.