According to Philippe Besset, president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France and guest on Monday from franceinfo, we carry out “400 to 450,000 tests per day”.
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Currently, “one in three tests is positive, that’s a lot”, said Monday, March 28 on franceinfo Philippe Besset, president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France. Public Health France recorded an average of 130,000 cases of Covid-19 per day last week. It is the great return of queues in front of pharmacies to be tested. According to Philippe Besset, between “400 and 450,000 tests per day” in pharmacies. “This is the maximum threshold without calling for help”he judges.
franceinfo: Is the increase in the number of cases really felt in pharmacies?
Philippe Besset: We test a lot. We have returned to around 400 or even 450,000 tests per day. This is roughly the same figure as last summer. The big difference is that at that time we tested ourselves to have the health pass and to be able to go to the restaurant. There, we only test ourselves when we have symptoms. We have almost one in three cases that is positive for Covid-19, which is a lot. It’s mostly people who have symptoms and they’re flu-like symptoms: sore throat, runny nose and fever. Symptoms therefore trigger the test. All age groups are truly affected. We can’t sort it out. Older people probably take more precautions because it is not fundamentally the population most at risk who currently contracts Covid. Alongside this Covid-19 rebound, there are also all the other winter illnesses that are not over.
There is just the flu. Do you see that too?
Yes, there is indeed this year a flu epidemic. We are again a little bit on all fronts. We thought at the end of February that we were out of the rut. There, the epidemic starts again. Fortunately, we manage to curb serious cases [de Covid-19]. Especially since now there is a treatment for serious cases and for people at risk. From the moment you are positive, you really have to ask your doctor to see if you are eligible for treatment. This is an important message to convey.
Do you have enough staff to carry out antigen tests or reinstall the barnums on the sidewalks?
This is the moment when we really ask ourselves the question, because we will again be at the maximum level of what we can do by ourselves. We will therefore have to ask ourselves the question of taking on additional staff or indeed barnums. We went up to more than 1.1 million antigenic tests per day in January, but with support that we recruited. There, we are at 400,000 and it is the maximum threshold without calling for help. Our fellow biologists have also put in place fairly significant resources to be able to carry out a large number of laboratory tests. Remember that the PCR test is the reference. It can also make it possible to know which variants one has contracted. What does not allow the antigenic in pharmacy. On the other hand, the only drawback is that the result rendering time is a little longer. It takes 24 hours while we have an immediate rendering in ten minutes with the antigenic test.