Le Figaro
Active workers who have signs suggestive of Covid or have been in contact with a positive person must isolate themselves and telecommute for 7 days and take a test.
For those who cannot telecommute, the Health Insurance allows them to take exceptional sick leave without a waiting day since January 10.
These stops should allow them to isolate themselves and take a screening test.
They are therefore easy to obtain, the applicant just needs to make a declaration on the Health Insurance website (
declare.ameli.fr
): during this step, the insured declares his situation, confirms that he cannot telework (checks will be carried out) and undertakes to carry out a test within the following two days.
The employee can directly download a document to send to the employer to justify his absence.
Read also: Automatic work stoppages for suspicion of Covid-19: is there a risk of abuse?
As soon as they have obtained the test result, the person must reconnect to indicate the date of receipt of the test result and the location of the test.
Whether the test is positive or negative, daily allowances are paid for the period from the date of the first declaration to the date of the test result, but this may not exceed four days.
Finally, payment of compensation is subject to the actual performance of the test.
Medicare will follow up with two to three phone calls during the week.
If the test is negative, Medicare puts an end to the work stoppage and the person can resume their professional activity the next day.
A downloadable summary must be given to the employer.
If the result is positive, the person is contacted by Medicare to trace his contacts and to obtain an extension of the sick leave in order to guarantee isolation for seven days.
And in the public?
Unlike private sector employees exempt from waiting days in the event of Covid, civil servants were subject to it.
In their self-health insurance system, if the agents had had to declare that they were positive for Covid, there would have been a violation of medical confidentiality.
To get around this problem, a self-declaration platform "
allowing the agent to enter his data and receive a certificate not mentioning the pathology
" was created.
It is this self-declaration that will trigger the issuance of a receipt allowing the agent to be exempt from the waiting day.
Then, the public official who has the symptoms declares it on the declare.ameli.fr platform and undertakes to perform a test within two days.
During this period and until the results of the test, the public official is placed on special leave of absence.
If the test result is negative, the public official can resume his duties the day after receiving the results.
If it is positive, he records the date of obtaining the test result on the dedicated platform and is placed on sick leave by his employer.
Reinforced controls
For this system, necessary in times of epidemic, to work, everything depends on the solidity and fluidity of the organization and the controls carried out by the Health Insurance.
If the procedure seems secure enough to avoid the simplest abuses, many company managers are worried about the means of Medicare to carry out the checks.
Last point that questions: the fact of doing without a doctor's diagnosis.
Let us not forget that during the first wave, the government facilitated the use of teleconsultations and Doctolib-type platforms had seen their attendance increase sharply.
A path that should be made known to policyholders, rather than favoring self-diagnosis.
Read also: Sickness leave without a doctor: 4,000 requests for suspected Covid filed every day last week
Finally, the question of cost arises: at most, if all employees (ie 25 million French people) used this device, the maximum cost would be 7.8 billion euros.
Since the system has been in place, the number of sick leave auto granted has been around 4000 to 5000 sick leave per day.
This is in addition to the 30,000 sick leaves granted to the French each day.
It appears necessary for the government to communicate on this cost to call on French employees to be civic-minded and to emphasize that it is the community and the employers who pay.
Le Figaro
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