France is not making full use of its testing capacity to detect the coronavirus, epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet, member of the Scientific Council, estimated on LCI on Tuesday. "We have a testing capacity that goes up to 100,000 tests per day," he said, but "this testing capacity is not used enough, we are at around 30,000 tests per day."
For Arnaud Fontanet, it would be necessary to go up to approximately “50,000 tests per day”, by testing people who have symptoms of Covid-19, but also by carrying out more test campaigns directly with the populations, as it was the case in Île-de-France with centers set up in streets or on market places. "These are very nice initiatives," he said.
▶ #CoronavirusFrance: if the epidemic started again quietly, when would we have visible signs?
🗣 Pr Arnaud Fontanet: "If people are going to be tested when they have symptoms, we would see it in real time".
📺 @EliMartichoux #LaMatinaleLCI channel 2⃣6⃣. pic.twitter.com/c5RULfgJMM
"Most of the clusters (...) take place in a confined environment"
After the music festival, where open-air gatherings took place without respecting social distancing, the researcher recalled that "most of the clusters (...) take place in a confined environment". However, "if you have, in the midst of these young people dancing, an infected subject and in particular a super-contaminator (...), a very contagious person (...) it will of course in these conditions infect a lot" , he warned. According to him, between 10 and 20 people can then be reached.
France has recorded since the beginning of March nearly 30,000 deaths in connection with this epidemic, which is now considered to be under control. According to the latest report, Monday evening, 23 additional deaths were recorded in 24 hours and the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care continues to decrease at the same time.