To unclog pharmacies, Philippe Besset, president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France, believes Monday, January 10 on franceinfo that it is necessary “testing as a priority the people who have symptoms, the people who are contact cases, it is very important”, while the government announced “a reinforcement plan” to increase the number of Covid-19 screening tests carried out.
For him, “what embolises us most currently in pharmacy, it is the screening of young people, school children”. “It is a procedure which, probably, will have to be reviewed over time if it ever embolishes too much the screening capacities in France”, he said, considering that what is “important”, “is to confirm the positive self-tests” and test “symptomatic and contact cases”.
According to him, the prioritization “announced in the government’s plan” is going in the right direction, he repeated, as pharmacies are drowning with the number of tests to be carried out each day. “It’s a million antigenic tests carried out in pharmacies per day, that makes an average of 100 tests per pharmacy, two people from the pharmacy team mobilized every day for the testing, it’s absolutely huge”, said Philippe Besset. According to him, “testing works” to isolate positive people and “we must continue to do it” for “avoid multiple contaminations”.
Faced with the lack of manpower to test and test quickly, the president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France lamented the complexity “to find people trained and able to work”, reacting to the government’s desire to allow pharmacists to set up their screening centers and give them the possibility of temporarily recruiting health professionals themselves.
“All the caregivers are busy, nurses, doctors also, health students, we have already mobilized them for vaccination and for testing”, he explained, conceding however that “any reinforcement is welcome”, concerning the government’s decision to further expand the number of people eligible to take tests.
If some pharmacies do not test for Covid-19, it is because they are dedicated to vaccination, according to Philippe Besset. “It is complicated for a pharmacy to do both acts, screening and vaccination, at the same time, knowing that it is vaccination that will get us out of this epidemic, I understand my colleagues who are dedicated to vaccination”, he said, specifying that “these pharmacies deliver self-tests” as a “participation in the screening process”.