The SI-DEP portal, which allows you to enter and retrieve the results of a Covid-19 screening test, has been “submerged”, explained Wednesday on franceinfo François Blanchecotte, president of the national union of biologists. The sharp increase in the number of tests, with “nearly 7 million” of screenings over a week, resulted in “access difficulties”.
franceinfo: Has the number of tests increased sharply in recent weeks?
François Blanchecotte: There is so much demand that we have a very tight workforce. We have almost doubled the test requests in a few weeks. We will accumulate, over the last seven days, nearly 7 million tests, including almost 3 million PCR tests. We therefore reach records and exceed 700, 800, 1000 tests per day in each laboratory.
Are the deadlines more important to obtain the results?
We have had cases of quite annoyed people who did not want to wait very long. This manifested itself in some assaults in the laboratories. We are in the process of conducting a survey to communicate in a precise manner. There is also the question of screening. Is there a need to make the name Omicron or Delta knowing that in some areas the Omicron variant has won an overwhelming majority of tests and sometimes over 80% of positive tests are for that variant? The Omicron variant has mainly invaded large regions, in particular Ile-de-France and in the South. We have regions on the seashore that remain with a majority of Delta variants.
Is it difficult to retrieve the QR Code after taking the test?
The Si-Dep portal on which we retrieve the QR Code has been overwhelmed. There are difficulties in accessing and rendering results. It seems that the server is saturated with the requests that are pouring in. For now and we hope this will be resolved overnight.
A meeting is scheduled for Thursday with the test cell of the Regional Health Agency. What are you going to ask for at this meeting?
It is a meeting which takes place every week and which brings together all the laboratory groups and trade unions representing the profession around a person in charge of the test unit. As far as personnel are concerned, this is a very important meeting because we have to extend the scope of the people who can come and help us. We rely on it a lot because today we have people who are stopped, tired and who yearn for rest. We must derogate from the Public Health Code to obtain additional staff who are not normally authorized to come and work in our laboratories. They are often laboratory assistants, students … These people can respond to administrative or technical requests as well as to requests for samplers.