REPORTAGE
Identifying "dormant clusters": this has been the obsession of health authorities since deconfinement. And even if the number of patients with coronavirus continues to decrease in hospitals, the inhabitants of 32 municipalities of Ile-de-France have received for a few days in their mailbox or on their email a good Health Insurance. He offers them free screening. This affects a total of 1.2 million people, or almost 10% of Ile-de-France residents. The first screenings began on Friday, notably in Nanterre, in the Hauts-de-Seine.
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At the foot of the building bars, in front of a private laboratory, David is the first volunteer for a screening. The precious voucher is displayed on his phone. "I received an email giving the possibility of taking a test for the whole city of Nanterre", tells the young man to Europe 1. In this commune, nearly 90,000 people can thus be tested free of charge.
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With the famous Health Insurance voucher, the first step is the PCR test, carried out using a long cotton swab pressed into the nose. After not always pleasant passage, David will know within 24 to 48 hours if he is carrying the virus. But there is a second step, with a virological test, a blood test intended to look for possible antibodies developed in contact with the virus.
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With this campaign, the health authorities want to meet these residents with limited access to tests. The aim to identify: dormant clusters. These unknown sources of contamination. "Nanterre was chosen because there had been more cases," said Caroline Gutsmuth, a biologist in the Nanterre laboratory. "We also noticed that there were a lot of asymptomatic virus carriers, who suddenly transmitted the virus without knowing it. So that's why we do mass screening." In two days, around twenty inhabitants came to be tested in this laboratory.