rush on testing before New Years Eve

Queues are long in front of pharmacies, where some people are willing to wait sometimes an hour to be tested. Mostly vaccinated and without symptoms, many French people simply want to reassure themselves before Christmas Eve. “I find friends and I wanted to be tested so as not to spread the virus“, admits a passer-by. In a Parisian pharmacy, the number of tests carried out went from 60 last week to 120. “There is a real increase in people being tested and in positive cases. Two weeks ago we were at two or four positives per day, yesterday I was 18.“, counts a pharmacist.

To avoid queuing, the self-test solution remains, now available in supermarkets. “The self-tests were not put in self-service but at the reception of the store to be able to distribute them, one box per family, and avoid the rush“, details the manager of a supermarket.”I do my shopping and I found that it was rather practical to reconcile everything“, explains a customer, who leaves with a box of self-tests in her shopping basket.