A pilot project to screen for COVID-19 by gargling set up in an elementary school in Saint-Hubert has given such encouraging results that it will soon be extended to all elementary schools in Montérégie, La Presse has learned. Canadian.
In particular, the project could have the effect of fighting absenteeism, by preventing students and their teachers from having to go for a screening test outside the walls of the school in the event of contact with SARS-CoV- 2.
“We proposed to take screening out of our designated screening clinics,” said Dr. David-Martin Milot, a specialist in public health and preventive medicine from the public health department of the CISSS de la Montérégie-Center. The gargling method is very easy to put forward. “
Eventually, schools may be able to organize screening independently, he said, with materials provided to them by officials. The samples collected will then be sent to the laboratory for analysis.
The pilot project “worked very, very well,” said Dr. Milot, even though it was only a simulation since no real COVID case had been detected at the school where it was was held.
In addition to parents and children who do not have to travel, the designated clinics also benefit since the screening at school avoids them having to accommodate a group of children, which frees up the capacity to other patients.
“It is a win-win-win scenario as much for the directorates as for public health as for the screening teams”, said Dr Milot.
An information campaign for parents will accompany the roll-out of gargle screening in schools in the Montérégie region.
The Ministry of Health and Social Services and the Ministry of Education recently announced that rapid COVID-19 screening tests would be implemented in schools in ten regions of the province, including Montreal, Laval and in Montérégie.
Rapid tests and gargle tests play complementary roles. A recent study led by Dr Caroline Quach-Thanh concluded that rapid tests have a role to play when children have symptoms, which could prevent them from sending them home unnecessarily.
Rapid tests are also more effective when the viral load is high, which is when the contagion is greatest, and they should be reserved primarily for symptomatic people, which is not the case for gargle tests. .
“Unlike a rapid screening test, (gargling) does not give an immediate result, for example in a school,” commented Dr. Annie-Claude Labbé, of Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont. The speed of the result is an advantage of the rapid screening test, and that is why I am saying that the two modalities could have complementary interests.
“Each little solution can contribute its part to a bigger solution and that’s how we’re going to end up out of this crisis, I think. “