Last week, France officially surpassed the historic bar of 900,000 Covid-19 tests per week. Mass screening that puts the question of alternative tests at the heart of concerns. Let’s take stock of the situation.
The explosion of coronavirus tests
During the deconfinement, France aimed to carry out more than 700,000 PCR tests per week. Sunday, August 30, Gabriel Attal, the government spokesperson announced that France had just exceeded the historic bar of 900,000 coronavirus tests per week. This is good news according to the government but which panics laboratories in large cities. This is the case in Paris or Marseille where the laboratories no longer know how to respond to the significant demand.
Under these conditions, the establishment of barnums in Paris was announced in order to increase the screening capacity and relieve the laboratories. These Covid-19 screening centers will be installed from August 31, in front of most district town halls. This new Parisian device should allow at least 1,500 tests per day. The tests are free and given without a prescription.
Anyway and whether you are Parisian or not, if you want to be tested for the coronavirus, go to the site sante.fr which lists all the testing centers closest to you.
Read also : A coronavirus screening test that gives the results in 15 min available from the end of September?
The wait for alternative tests
Faced with the explosion in coronavirus screenings, alternative tests are increasingly expected. But we will have to show more patience. Indeed, last Thursday, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, announced ” Studies are in progress […] to assess the reliability of saliva tests “To which he added” The possible approval of saliva tests to detect the new coronavirus, simpler and less unpleasant than the test by taking a sample from the nostrils, will only take place after the conclusions of studies that have just been launched “.
The first study on saliva tests was launched at the Andrée Rosemon Hospital Center in Cayenne (Guyana). The other study is carried out by Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP). The latter should make it possible to determine whether the so-called RT-PCR analysis technique is as reliable on saliva as on a nasopharyngeal sample. At the same time, other evaluations of the oropharyngeal tests used by certain countries are also underway according to Olivier Véran.
Asked about the saliva tests, the government spokesperson said: “ it is a very strong research issue […] The President of the Republic, in the last Defense Council, asked that we go much faster and that we intensify research on these subjects. “.
