Amélie has been waiting for her turn to be tested for Covid-19 for almost two hours. Behind her, this Saturday afternoon on Boulevard du Temps in Paris (eleventh), the line stretches for several tens of meters and continues still in the perpendicular street. “I have just returned from a vacation in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) with friends who have tested positive. I carried out analyzes on the spot which turned out to be negative, but out of prudence, I will do it again ”, explains the young woman of 27 years.
Once inside, it will take a few minutes to take the nasal swab. "For the result, I will have to wait several more days, until Thursday," breathes Amélie. This is much more than the average delay observed by the health authorities. However, "if we let a symptomatic person be in contact with the community for even three days, they risk infecting other individuals," said Vittoria Colizza, director of research at Inserm, on the media. online The Conversation.
"The first date is September 7th"
Khalid, data analyst in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine), will have his results faster than Amélie. "I have to undergo surgery on Thursday and before that, the doctors want to be sure that I do not have the virus," he says. Why cross all of Paris to come to this laboratory? "Because it is one of the few open on Saturday afternoon and it takes without an appointment", explains the young man.
Jeanne, a 33-year-old civil servant, lives nearly an hour by metro away, in Gennevilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis): “In my town, the labs are overwhelmed, the first available appointment is the September 7, ”she explains. Like Amélie and Khalid, she has no symptoms. But she invited her 23-year-old little brother to her house for dinner this week, just before he fell ill. Where did he contract the Covid? Impossible to say. "He saw a lot of friends during the holidays, in Rouen, Orléans ..." tries to understand Jeanne, who should have her results online Thursday ... Finally, if the computer server, saturated with requests, wants to work well, the we warned.
As the rain begins to fall heavily, Jesus, a retiree from the neighborhood, cuts the line to try to get back to his apartment. " It makes no sense! Look, the line goes through the middle of the bar terrace. You can imagine, there are necessarily positive people in the crowd, ”he exclaims, without a mask, while his wearing has been compulsory since Friday throughout Paris.
Overwhelmed labs, an endless line on the sidewalk: the same scene is repeated all over the capital. And it is far from over. A pillar of the anti-Covid strategy, screening must still gain momentum. The government now expects one million per week against 890,000 currently. An effort which has still not made it possible to contain the epidemic rebound.
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But are we testing effectively? "We are not trying at all to control the virus in this country," Catherine Hill criticized Thursday. The epidemiologist repeats that it is necessary to “massively test” representative samples of the population, to find out where the asymptomatic carriers of the virus are, and not to test “those who want to be tested”.