recontaminations can occur after “a month or a month and a half”, according to the union of biologists

We observe recontaminations with Covid-19 at the end “a month or a month and a half”explained on franceinfo on Monday March 28 François Blanchecotte, president of the Syndicate of biologists, while according to Philippe Besset, president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France, “one in three tests is positive”. Public Health France recorded an average of 130,000 cases of Covid-19 per day last week.

franceinfo: Do ​​you also observe that one in three tests is positive?

Francois Blanchecotte: Absoutely. We are almost one in three positive tests, with 3 million PCRs done over the last week. So we have high rates of contamination and positivity. We are in phases which correspond to the fourth wave where we had positive tests regularly. These are symptomatic people. These are recontaminations, people who have made Omicron waves and who today are contaminating themselves with the [variant] BA.2.

What is the time between recontaminations?

There are people who were infected a month or a month and a half ago and who are recontaminated. It is often with the children, the family and in nursing homes. The clusters that we discover are 57% in nursing homes and medical establishments with disabled people at 14%. In companies, we are at 8% and in nurseries at 10%.

Have the symptoms changed?

Many people tell us of quite long, very violent headaches, which immobilize them for several days. That’s why there are stops from a certain number of personnel, which are not easy to control. It is difficult to have recruitment and we have staff that we are lacking.

What is the profile of the people who come to the laboratories?

We have people between 10 and 49 years old. This is the vast majority of recontaminations. The screening rate per 100,000 inhabitants in some categories exceeds 3,000.