Despite more than 1 million weekly tests carried out to detect Covid-19, the queues are always full. The government has announced that physiotherapists can now help with the sampling under conditions and has formalized a new rapid screening test.
- The Minister of Health has authorized the deployment of a new antigenic test, called “rapid”. It is intended to unclog queues for PCR tests.
- As the rapid antigen test is less reliable, it is primarily intended for asymptomatic people or people who are not considered to be “contact cases”. If it is positive, the person will have to carry out a PCR test.
- In this same decree, the Minister authorizes masseurs-physiotherapists to undergo training to strengthen the collection staff.
Day after day, huge queues form in front of medical analysis laboratories to be tested for Covid-19. A giant traffic jam that undermines the pandemic prevention strategy and calls into question government strategy. According to The Parisian, more and more members of the executive are questioning the responsiveness of the Ministry of Health as well as its ability to organize crisis management. Under pressure, Olivier Véran, his minister, intends to apply measures already mentioned in August but so far remained a dead letter.
Faced with the surge in cases of contamination and the demands of the President of the Republic for better management of queues for screening, the Minister of Health authorized the use of a new antigenic test “to strengthen screening capacities”, is it written this Wednesday in a decree published in Official newspaper.
A new antigen test
These antigen tests, like PCRs, are swabs that collect particles from the back of the nose. A reagent is applied to the material collected and previously deposited on a strip. Within 30 minutes, the person knows whether virus proteins are present or not. A response much faster than the PCR tests whose analysis time is 3 hours… but unreliable. The risk of a false positive is high since it detects the presence of protein secreted by Covid-19 and not its presence.
Therefore, the PCR test remains the reference to know if a person is contaminated or not. Saliva tests are always absent subscribers although they are normally more reliable than rapid tests. As for serologicals, they determine whether the person has antibodies against Covid-19, but, according to some scientists, they can quickly disappear in asymptomatic people.
Prioritization of PCR tests
For the ministry, this rapid antigen test should make it possible to “relieve the medical biology laboratories of certain patients and improve the transmission times for the results of the RT PCR tests.”
In the decree, the ministry specifies that this new test “constitutes a diagnostic orientation element that is not intended to replace the diagnosis made by a detection examination of the SARS-CoV-2 genome by RT PCR carried out in a medical biology laboratory. This is therefore a first screening for asymptomatic people who, in the event of a positive rapid test, will be asked to carry out a PCR test. For this reason, this test is not intended for people who are symptomatic or identified as “contact case”, he specifies.
More arms
In this same decree, the Minister authorizes physiotherapists to carry out these antigenic tests or PCR, under conditions. An announcement that delights the president of the Order of physiotherapists, Pascale Mathieu: “it did not seem conceivable to us that physiotherapists be excluded from the system for detecting new cases.” Recognition of their profession, according to the French Federation of rehabilitative massage therapists. To be able to participate in the national effort, volunteer physiotherapists must first undergo training to carry out this examination.
Thus, the 87,000 masseurs-physiotherapists can, like caregivers, firefighters, first aiders and health students, relieve health laboratory employees in carrying out these PCR or rapid tests. More than 1 million PCR tests per week have been carried out in France, with the expected drop in temperatures, demand is expected to increase further.
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