By Sylvain Petitjean
Contaminations are exploding and contact cases are increasing: the delays before obtaining a window for screening are lengthening, the results are long overdue. Should we end up creating dedicated centers?
Lhe number of PCR or antigenic tests exploded with 8.29 million screenings validated between December 27 and January 2, against 6.85 million a week earlier, specifies the Drees (direction of research, studies, evaluation and statistics), in a press release. The daily record was also broken, with nearly 1.9 million tests on December 31, just before Christmas Eve.
If the results are returned in less than 24 hours in 95% of cases, thanks to two thirds of rapid antigenic tests, the times are lengthened a little for the PCR carried out in laboratories, where this rate drops to 86%.
24 hours, 48 hours, or more
Since the start of the week, on the appointment booking platforms, the available slots have suddenly become scarce. If getting a pharmacy screening before Christmas Eve was difficult, it is now impossible to find one quickly. An experience that is more difficult for parents whose child is in contact and who must provide a first test carried out by a professional to be able to return to school.
In Gironde, the first available appointment can be made within 48 hours, or even more on the eve of a weekend … Ditto in Dordogne, Landes or Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The bar falls at 24 hours in Charentes or Lot-et-Garonne. Of course, good surprises are possible, by frantically updating your research or by turning to masseurs-physiotherapists who also have niches, unexpected, but welcome.
“Difficult to test everyone”
“With the protocol in schools, the situation in our pharmacies is more and more tense: we have to carry out our ordinary activity, vaccination and screening,” explains Gérard Deguin, vice-president of the Order of pharmacists of New Aquitaine.
“330,000 new cases per day, that’s nearly 3 million contact cases to be tested… It’s unabsorbable! »Emphasizes Gérard Deguin. “Overall we can answer, but it seems very difficult to be able to test everyone. Of course we are doing the maximum, but we cannot multiply ourselves. Without neglecting that in our teams we also have parents who have children in contact. “
On the laboratory side, the appointment slots are also not expandable. Some networks have had to temporarily suspend their activity in order to be able to process the tests carried out and limit the number of daily screenings to 400. “We have reached records and exceeded 700, 800, sometimes 1000 tests carried out per day in each laboratory” specifies François Blanchecotte , president of the national union of biologists who hopes for a relaxation of the perimeter of personnel who could intervene as reinforcements: students, laboratory assistants… This question is also on the agenda of a meeting to be held this Thursday with the ARS.
Success not guaranteed
To compensate for the near saturation of laboratories and pharmacies, some are pleading for the opening of large screening centers, on the model of the vaccinodromes deployed last spring. Statistician at Urssaf, Jean-Claude Jaillet recalls that “we had large screening centers when we had 20,000 cases per day. And that today at 300,000 you have to wait 1 hour 30 minutes in front of a pharmacy to be able to go to school, that doesn’t make sense. “
However, such a structure must be overseen by a nurse, in particular to access the Sidep interface for entering results. “The problem is that they are mobilized elsewhere, at the hospital or in the vaccination centers”, explains a spokesperson for Civil Protection in the Landes who had conducted ephemeral screenings last July, at the ARS request.
But success is not guaranteed: in Quimper, the center set up by the City had to close because the laboratories that provided the analyzes were unable to follow the too large number of screenings. “In the Landes, such an operation is not on the agenda, for lack of nurses. But the situation can change quickly. The Civil Protection teams stand ready to be mobilized.
The fulgurance of the Omicron wave is also a ray of hope, as the pharmacist Gérard Deguin wants to believe. “In South Africa, the climb, and the descent, was very fast. Not sure we have time to deploy screening centers before the wave ends. The tension will still last until next week, but we can hope for a rapid decline afterwards. “