The weeks follow each other, and look alike now.
After a peak reached in the week of January 3 to 9, the rush on Covid-19 screening tests is weakening considerably.
For the fourth consecutive week, demand slowed, from January 31 to February 6, with a total of 6.99 million samples validated by a health professional, according to the latest data from the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees), attached to the Ministry of Health.
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The French therefore carried out 2.32 million fewer tests last week than over the previous seven days, a drop of a quarter, notes the Drees.
What relieve a sector extremely solicited since November.
Two-thirds of the tests are antigenic, but this share, “
among all the tests carried out is very disparate between age groups
”, notes the statistical service: it thus reaches 75% for the youngest, but drops to 35 % among people over 75 years old.
In addition, the current decline is marked for all age groups: it is particularly strong among those under 65, where a free fall of several million tests is observed.
The daily record remains set at January 10, 2022, when 2.28 million tests were performed in one day.
By comparison, last week, an average of 998,700 tests were validated each day, falling below the million mark for the first time since the end of December.
The pressure is therefore finally starting to reduce, without for the moment returning to the levels observed pre-fifth wave.
The extraordinary record of the fifth wave
The Omicron wave, which started in November, brought the demand for tests to levels never seen before.
Since January 1, 2021, France has carried out 219.5 million Covid-19 screening tests, including 84.5 million between mid-November and the end of January 2022. That is more than a third of the total, in just two and a half months .
Assumed by the executive, the screening campaign has however pushed laboratories, pharmacies and barnums to work at a frantic pace.
It also had a significant cost, of the order of 1.5 billion euros in the month of January 2022 alone, according to Bercy.
The envelope budgeted for this year will have to be revised upwards, the entire amount having been consumed for this first month of the year.
For the time being, there are no plans to change the current policy, despite criticism from some representatives, who believe that this massive campaign no longer makes sense in the era of the contagious but less dangerous Omicron variant. .
It remains to be seen how the situation will evolve, while the executive is counting on reductions in health rules, such as the vaccination pass, in the spring, if the decline in the epidemic is confirmed over the weeks.