The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, promises: “we are going to increase the number of tests carried out on the territory”. Several associations and health professionals point to shortcomings preventing the multiplication of tests.
- Authorities want to increase Covid-19 screening tests
- But the country lacks reagents and sampling swabs
This is a recommendation that comes directly from the World Health Organization (WHO), the population must be massively tested for coronavirus. An injunction to which Olivier Véran, Minister of Health responded favorably, who replied that “yes, France has a vocation to follow the recommendations of the WHO” and to “multiply the number of tests carried out on the territory”. The goal of the World Organization is to “go on the attack” in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
In France, a lack of reagents and swabs
The number of tests carried out to detect Covid-19 has already increased. From now on, 9,000 daily screenings are carried out before a target of 10,000 for the end of the week and double for the following week. France is moving towards tests based on serology, i.e. a blood test, as Olivier Véran explained after a meeting with the Committee for Analysis, Research and expertise (Care), which brings together 12 researchers and doctors to advise the government on treatments and tests for the coronavirus.
Many members of the various medical professions in the country warn of an insufficiency in our capacities to multiply the tests on the population. About fifteen organizations of doctors and medical biologists denounced on Tuesday March 24 the shortage of equipment limiting “considerably”, according to them, the screening capacities for the virus in France. “In the world, particularly in South Korea and among its German and Italian neighbours, these difficulties do not exist. Why is France one of the only countries to have so little equipment?”ask the medical organizations in a press release.
Obstacles to the multiplication of tests
One of the main obstacles to the multiplication of tests resides in “the lack of reagents (components that reveal the virus)”, the organizations warned. “Some laboratories that had implemented their screening technique several days ago are forced to stop carrying out these tests due to a lack of consumables”, they add. Another deficit, the lack ofswabs, a kind of sticks used to take the samples. “Some private and public laboratories are forced to develop artisanal tricks to increase the possibilities of swabbing”, they lament. A situation that “endangers the health of the French people”whereas “more and more scientists and publications demonstrate the value of mass screening of the population in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic”the statement concludes.
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