PARIS – With an additional accumulation of virus cases, France is suffering to manage enough controls to meet demand. One reason: many control labs are closed to take a summer vacation, just as the symptoms of a momentary wave are forming.
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 through everyone’s mobilization, there’s just not enough people,” emergency doctor Christophe Prudhomme told The Associated Press. at his hospital in the Parisian suburb of Bobigny.
“And then it’s an organizational consultation,” he said, urging regional fitness agencies “to organize 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.” he’ll take position only next week.”
Test disorders have also affected the United States and other countries. But the August ritual of France 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.
Medical offices and labs are no exception. Your staff wants to rest more than ever this complicated year. And with Parisians on holiday in the provinces, demand for medical facilities is sinking in the summer.
But in August, socially remote lines wind scattered Parisian laboratories that remain open, from the left bank to the canals of the north 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 some hospitals are almost drowning with patients inflamed with the virus in the first wave, in part due to insufficient testing, and has already lost more than 30,000 lives to the pandemic.
Two months of strict blockade and introspection on France’s early mistakes to set the country on track to defeat COVID-19. But it is now registering more than 1,000 new instances per day, and the number of patients in the extensive care groups is expanding slightly, for the first time in months.
France is in better shape than last time to take a step forward from new infections, however, detection is essential.
“The virus has disappeared at all. Array… Pollution continues and is expanding in some regions,” said Francois Blanchecotte, president of the Union of Medical Biologists, who has been at the forefront of French control efforts. “We want to adapt the verification strategy to this evolution.”
It requires a more specific policy that takes into account the functions of laboratories, such as the installation of tests 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 receipts were distributed just as dozens of labs were final for a vacation, exacerbating 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 holiday, which for French staff is a basic right earned with effort. But he issued a special decree expired last month authorizing some medical students, firefighters and emergency personnel to administer nasal samples opposite the coronavirus.
It also happened due to preventing an outbreak in western Brittany, the city of Quiberon, caused through a nightclub party last month. Authorities have suggested that everyone in the region be reviewed, a massive task on a peninsula where the population increases from 5,000 to 60,000 in the summer. Some revelers were thwarted through long queues at a makeshift control station and left. 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.
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 wanted an examination of Greece to paint on a farm could not get a date last month, so she tried her luck on Wednesday.
Some laboratories have adjusted their schedules to remain open late at night or on Sundays, either in France.
After being criticized for its limited verification capacity on the first wave, the government now says it can check up to 700,000 people a week and last week reached a record 457,000 controls.
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 their vacation. 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 and November are difficult months,” he warned. “We’ll have to be prepared.”