Yassine, 47, sits down, stiff with anguish.
As long as he doesn't have the Covid.
Wednesday 10 am, barely half an hour earlier, his wife, Sadio, tested positive under this barnum next to the dispensary at Porte Brancion in Paris (15th century).
He too will know the verdict within fifteen minutes.
For a week now, pharmacists, nurses and doctors have been able to practice these famous antigenic tests, less reliable but faster.
Moreover, they are only carried out when it is not possible to obtain a result in the lab within forty-eight hours.
There is nothing to pay, you just have to make an appointment.
“She told me she had lost her sense of smell, but I took it lightly.
We believe ourselves to be untouchable, ”said Yassine when the manager of the dispensary, Damien Bon, introduced the cotton swab into his nostrils, as in the lab.
“It's torture,” he exclaims.
"Madame was more courageous ..." teases the pharmacist, equipped from head to toe.
One bar is negative, two is positive
The pharmacist disperses a few drops on the case.
The result appears in about fifteen minutes./LP/Olivier Lejeune
Once the cotton swab is out, Damien dips it in a test tube filled with reagent and scatters a few drops on a case similar to a pregnancy test.
We just have to wait: one bar is negative, two is positive.
Recently trained in this technical gesture, the pharmacist has already achieved 120 in five days, including 30 positive.
Finally, Yassine's result falls: he does not have the Covid-19, but he will still have to take a separate room.
"Royal", breathes the forty-something when he finds his wife come, in front of the barnum, to bring him his vital card.
What?
Sadio is outside?
The pharmacist jumps up.
“I told you to stay home!
Come on, I don't want to see you anymore.
"
Total disinfection between two patients
In this morning, ten patients parade, all negative.
It is the turn of Sao, 50, sent here by his wife for “some headaches that disappear after the shower”.
Then Martine, 60, to come forward, “a little stressed by all these deaths on TV”.
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Between two patients, Damien disinfects everything.
There you have it, Florian, 39, with a little fever and headache, can enter.
It does not seem to be the Covid-19, he judges.
The disease already took him to the hospital three months ago, after a pulmonary embolism.
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As for Riadh, a few chills make him doubt.
At worst, he has the virus.
"No big deal," he thinks.
"Not necessarily, retorts the pharmacist to the relentless argument: I lost my 65-year-old stepfather before confinement.
"And this screening, he recalls, is not a free pass to overcome barrier gestures.
"You realize that, every evening, young people discuss without masks in front of my windows!
Between the Covid and the attacks, we will never get out of it, ”Nathalie, another patient, despairs.
This neighborhood group, Damien knows them and he went to reason with them.
"I managed to convince one whose mother is a pharmacy customer, the others are shouting a plot, they don't believe it, it's crazy!
"
Coronavirus: this antigenic testing center gives results in 15 minutes
All day long, the man in the white coat also responds to fears and the flood of questions.
As the test is less reliable, contact cases, people with symptoms for more than four days or over 65 must go to the lab.
What revolts this man, leaning on his crutch.
“At 75, I'm not going to stand in line for four hours in the cold!
It's disgusting.
The pharmacist breathes, himself a little lost by these rules.
"If someone can explain to him why, I don't have the answer.
"
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