Covid-19: how the end of free testing is already shaking up the monitoring of the epidemic

It was the great fear of epidemiologists: that the end of free testing for all would make it partially blind to the Covid-19 epidemic.

Since Friday, the unvaccinated must pay for their screening themselves, unless they have a medical prescription or if they are in contact.

Three days later, we are already seeing an impact on daily positive cases.

While the curve had started rising slightly for a week, it has been weakening for three days.

4,899 cases were identified in 24 hours between Friday and Saturday, 3,778 between Saturday and Sunday, and 1,057

between Sunday and Monday (many laboratories and pharmacies are closed on Sundays), versus respectively 4,734, 3,991, 1,120 a week earlier.

The upward trend therefore appears to have stopped, at least temporarily.

The numbers of tests carried out daily are only known within three days.

This Monday evening, it was discovered that 379,242 tests had been carried out on Friday, the day the non-refund came into effect.

This number is down 45% compared to the previous Friday (690,248), while the evolution was only -4% or -5% in previous weeks.

As one would expect, the fall is real and well marked.

Read alsoEnd of free anti-Covid tests: how not to lose monitoring of the epidemic?

However, we also note that an abnormally high number of tests were carried out last Thursday (826,500, + 71% compared to the previous Thursday).

This is undoubtedly explained by the fact that unvaccinated people took advantage of free admission one last time before the weekend, a negative test being valid for 72 hours for the health pass.

But from this week, they won't be able to.

2 million tests every week?

As we said in the introduction, symptomatic unvaccinated people (and who can therefore ask their doctor for a prescription) or contact cases, who are most likely to be positive, can still benefit from free tests. But we know that we can very well have been infected and remain asymptomatic. Some unvaccinated who would have been tested to have the health pass but who did not want to pay several tens of euros for their loved one would undoubtedly have been positive. By testing a lot less people, it is therefore very likely that we will find a little less positives. Hence the impact that we observe on the curve of daily cases.

🗣️ The "comfort" tests paying from Friday: "The tests will only pay for people who have not been vaccinated at all and who have no prescription", assures Olivier Véran.

Follow the live 👇https: //t.co/cEwi3c61QM pic.twitter.com/eF3ykhx7w5

- franceinfo (@franceinfo) October 13, 2021

In recent days, Olivier Véran and Public Health France have not said they are very worried about the consequences that this would have.

"We are not going to break the thermometer," the Minister of Health assured Wednesday, October 13 on France Info, saying that he expected about 2 million tests to be still carried out each week (3.2 million on the 4th to October 10).