It was one of the most anticipated announcements in the Covid-19 testing strategy.
Are Saliva Tests Really Effective?
Are we going to be able to democratize them?
The suspense ended this Friday, September 18.
“Yes”, replies the High Authority for Health, but only in the event of symptoms.
These tests will be especially useful for those who cannot stand the cotton swab in the nose: children, the elderly, patients with cognitive disorders.
Instead of this unpleasant sample, they will just have to spit into a tube and take it to the lab.
But for everyone else, nothing changes.
To this innovation are added antigenic tests, which could become tomorrow "a very useful complement", in the words of the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, thanks to a result available in less than thirty minutes from a nasopharyngeal sample.
The High Authority for Health (HAS) is due to rule next week on their reliability.
Overwhelmed labs
Go faster, it is the absolute urgency to unclog the labs, which now perform 1.2 million tests per week, against 300,000 at the end of July.
Faced with a monster crowd, some even have to draw the curtain.
At the laboratory of the Center cardiologique du Nord, in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), we gave ourselves a few days to "breathe and come to your senses".
No PCR exam for the general public was carried out on Thursday or Friday, compared to 800 to 900 the previous days.
“We were at the end of the line.
Carrying out tests, we know how to do it, it's our job, but not managing queues and fights!
», Says Arnaud Chenebit, co-director of the site.
Faced with exacerbated tensions in queues sometimes lasting six hours, the biologist had to hire one, then two, then three security guards!
"We called the police three times," says the doctor, describing surreal situations.
A man who parks his car at 11 p.m. and sleeps in it to secure a place at 6 a.m.
A parallel traffic which is organized with coin-operated places.
Or even a “guitoune” which saw the light of day one morning.
“Someone was selling sandwiches.
It felt like we were at Madonna's concert!
»Laughs Arnaud Chenebit yellow.
For Yacine (the first name has been changed), a biologist in a laboratory in the center of Paris, we have to go back to prescription.
The only way to distinguish between urgent and non-urgent cases.
Without this, he will have to continue to announce with lip service barely believable results deadlines: ten days, last week, thirteen today.
The number of deaths has doubled in one week
The epidemic, she does not wait.
Friday, we again beaten - and largely - the record of the number of positive cases recorded in 24 hours: 13,215. The figures of hospitalizations (+ 45% in one week) and admissions in intensive care (+ 48%) are more than ever on the rise.
And, for the first time since the end of confinement, the number of deaths has doubled in seven days: 265 dead this week, against 129 the previous one.
"The intensification of the spread of the virus among the oldest people raises fears of the continuation of hospitalizations and deaths in the weeks to come", underlines Public Health France.
Especially since it is also necessary to take care of non-Covid patients and that the caregivers are exhausted.
Will the arrival of saliva tests make it possible to better control the epidemic?
"It will only be a marginal tool that we will use when we cannot do otherwise," replies Lionel Barrand, president of the Union of young medical biologists.
No, it's not going to unclog the labs, and no, it's not the miracle solution.
"It will take, according to him, other" bricks to build the house ", such as reverting to the ordinance, also increasing the number of machines, reagents, hiring staff ..." All that would allow to have a real strategy and results within a reasonable timeframe.
"
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“Today, the gap between the need for the test, its performance and its result does not allow us to respond to the health situation, because contagious people are left in the wild”, points out Mathias Wargon, head of emergencies in Saint- Denis.
For him, “the real turning point will be when we have tests sold in supermarkets, accessible and easy to use.
Kind of like pregnancy tests.
This would make it possible to rule out the negatives in order to focus on the sick.