The high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 before and shortly after the onset of symptoms suggests that only diagnosing and isolating symptomatic patients may not be sufficient to interrupt the spread of infection; therefore, public health measures such as personal distancing are also necessary. Additionally, it will be important to detect the newly infected individuals who remain asymptomatic, which may account for 50% or more of the cases. Molecular techniques are the “gold standard” for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, the massive use of these techniques has generated some problems. On the one hand, the scarcity of resources (analyzers, fungibles and reagents), and on the other the delay in the notification of results. These two facts translate into a lag in the application of isolation measures among cases and contacts, which favors the spread of the infection. Antigen detection tests are also direct diagnostic methods, with the advantage of obtaining the result in a few minutes and at the very “pointof-care”. Furthermore, the simplicity and low cost of these tests allow them to be repeated on successive days in certain clinical settings. The sensitivity of antigen tests is generally lower than that of nucleic acid tests, although their specificity is comparable. Antigenic tests have been shown to be more valid in the days around the onset of symptoms, when the viral load in the nasopharynx is higher. Having a rapid and real-time viral detection assay such as the antigen test has been shown to be more useful to control the spread of the infection than more sensitive tests, but with greater cost and response time, such as in case of molecular tests. The main health institutions such as the WHO, the CDC and the Ministry of Health of the Government of Spain propose the use of antigenic tests in a wide variety of strategies to respond to the pandemic. This document aims to support physicians involved in the care of patients with suspected SC2 infection, in the context of a growing incidence in Spain since September 2020, which already represents the second pandemic wave of COVID-19.

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Technology is among firms ownership advantages explaining their internationalisation as, now for decades, the eclectic approach has highlighted. The debate about the positive versus negative effects that foreign capital generates in the host economy has gained a new relevance today insofar as, on the one hand, the concept of systems of innovation allows us to rethink the interaction with the domestic/recipient economies and, on the other, the increasing internationalisation of the technological activities of multinational companies (MNCs) introduces new forms of that interaction. Therefore, the possibility of generation of external effects by MNCs today demands a new reformulation of the problem.In this vein, one of the strengthening aspects commonly underlined is that foreign knowledge, not completely appropriable by the foreign firms, may spill over into domestic firms. However, since the findings of the empirical evidence are not fully confirmatory of the hypothesis, and taking into account the new conditions, this essay attempts to offer new light with research about the Spanish manufacturing firms. Two main issues are focused on this analysis. First, the importance of dynamics in the assessment of technological spillovers motivated by foreign direct investment (FDI), which is possible thanks to the availability of a panel data for manufacturing firms in Spain in the period 1991-1999. Second, the importance that technology may have for the generation of spillovers and to what extent the Pavitt taxonomy of industries is still useful for in depth analysis of such a learning process.

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