Doctors and experts say that holiday hardening is just one component of a broader network of France’s testing strategy, a strategy that even the government’s virus advisory committee described this week as disorganized and “inadequate.”
“First, there’s a lack of staff to do the tests. If we don’t ask all fitness personnel to mobilize them all, there’s just not enough people,” emergency doctor Christophe Prudhomme told The Associated Press at his hospital in the Paris suburb of Bobigny.
“And then it’s an organizational consultation,” he said, urging regional fitness agencies “to organize the tests so that it’s not the citizen who has to pick up the phone and leave to call seven or 8 labs to make an appointment.” who will take up position only next week.
Test disorders have also affected the United States and other countries. But the French ritual of August of fleeing the cities to spend weeks of rest on the seashore, on the mountainside or in Grandma’s countryside is another entanglement. The symptoms of “Closed for holidays” hang door-to-door throughout Paris this month, from bakeries to iconic shoe and coffee outlets.
A strange August in Paris: how the city adapts to ensure the protection of visitors the pandemic
Medical offices and labs are no exception. Your staff wants more rest than ever this complicated year. And with Parisians on holiday in the provinces, demand for medical facilities decreases in summer.
But in August, socially remote lines meander the scattered Parisian laboratories that remain open, from the left bank to the northern canals of the city. Trying to get an appointment for the test can take a week or more. Then you can get results.
This is worrying news in a country that has noticed that famous hospitals almost drown with patients inflamed with the virus in the first wave, partly due to insufficient testing, and that has already lost more than 30,000 lives due to the pandemic.
Two months of strict blockade and introspection on France’s early mistakes to lead the country to defeat COVID-19. But it is now reporting more than 1,000 new cases per day, and the number of patients in extensive care sets is expanding slightly, for the first time in months.
France is in better shape than last time to take a step forward in terms of new infections, but detection is essential.
“The virus has disappeared at all. Array… Pollution continues and is expanding in some areas,” said Francois Blanchecotte, president of the Union of Medical Biologists, who has been at the forefront of screening efforts in France. “We want to adapt the check strategy to this evolution.”
It requires a more specific policy that takes into account the functions of laboratories, such as testing in spas or tourist sites where other young people congregate.
He is annoyed by a crusade by the general government to control 1.5 million Parisians to better perceive how the virus spreads. Loose check vouchers were distributed just as dozens of labs were ready for the holidays, which aggravated bottlenecks.
“We are at a crossroads. We saw a scenario of disorder in Paris, where the labs were not in a position to face thousands of other people at the same time. It’s a nightmare to get a date,” Blanchecotte said.
The government has not ordered anyone to skip the holidays, which the French consider a basic right won with effort. But he issued a special decree expired last month authorizing some medical students, firefighters and lifeguards to administer nasal samples opposed to the coronavirus.
It also happened due to preventing an outbreak in western Brittany the city of Quiberon, caused through a nightclub party last month. The authorities have suggested that everyone in the region be controlled, a huge task on a peninsula where the population increases from 5,000 to 60,000 in the summer. Some revelers were frustrated through long queues at an impromptu control station and withdrew. And the virus has spread.
In Paris, the city corridor seeks to relieve the summer tension of laboratories with a cell control on a beach of the Canal de La Villette, where the crowd was covered on Wednesday even before its opening.
Read more: Happiness across the sea as Paris Plages begins in the French capital through covid’s emerging tests
Noemie Maoso wants to make sure she’s virus-free before going on holiday to Ireland with her daughter. “I will do it to be serene on my journey, ” he said. Another woman who wants an examination of Greece to paint on a farm could not get a date last month, so she tried her luck on Wednesday.
Some labs have adjusted their schedules to stay open at night or on Sundays, either in France.
After being criticized for its limited verification capability on the first wave, the government now says it can check up to 700,000 people a week and succeed in a record 581,000 controls during the following week.
But the number of new positive cases is developing twice as fast as the expansion of rates, according to the knowledge of the national fitness agency.
Blanchecotte is concerned, but defended the resolution of allowing lab staff to take the holidays. For months, they worked to meet the need for virus testing, he said. Some tiered vacation outings or reduced vacation plans.
And autumn can be even worse.
“We know that September, October, November are complicated months,” he warned. “We have to be prepared.”
(AP)