Three barnums and two mobile laboratories where you can go without an appointment or prescription, in the slightest doubt. This is how from this Monday, Paris intends to absorb some of the endless queues that are now forming every day on its sidewalks. In question, increasingly important requests for Covid-19 screening.
According to Gabriel Attal, the spokesperson for the government, “we crossed (Saturday) the historic bar of 900,000 tests carried out in one week” across the country. The government's objective is now to achieve “in the short term” one million per week. How? 'Or' What ? "We will continue to develop the capacity for tests without prescription, without prescription, in the public space," replied the Secretary of State.
Results are slow
Testing vouchers are also sent to where the virus is circulating most intensely. Last week, 220,000 people aged 20 to 40 in the Bouches-du-Rhône, for example, were invited to be tested. In Paris, this rise in power comes up against a difficulty: a funnel effect linked to analytical capacities. Result: the three barnums and the two mobile laboratories will not be able to do more than 1,500 screenings per day. “The processing capacity needs to ramp up. It is essential to be effective ", judge Emmanuel Grégoire, the first deputy PS to the mayor of Paris.
Another consequence of this bottling partly due to a lack of reactive products, the delays to know the result are sometimes long. Lara, 22, is in her 5th year of medicine. Although she already practices in a hospital setting, she will have to wait until Thursday before knowing her serology. "I have no symptoms but as I am in contact with patients and I have just returned from vacation, it is highly recommended", explains the young woman, tested on Saturday in a Parisian laboratory which receives without an appointment.
According to the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, the verdict falls less than 36 hours after the nasal swab in "80% of cases". To speed up the movement, all eyes are now focused on saliva tests, which are less unpleasant and above all much faster, like the kit developed by the Montpellier laboratory Sys2Diag, a lozenge that changes color on contact with saliva. They would allow you to know in a few minutes whether you have contracted the Covid or not.
But their approval is slow. It will only intervene after the conclusions of studies that have just been launched in Guyana and in the Paris region. "We must first ensure that the saliva is a reliable liquid," proclaims the Directorate General of Health. The virus may be present there in lesser quantities than in the nose and throat. If not, these rapid tests could be used in transit areas such as airports to quickly isolate those at risk.