The coronavirus pandemic has already killed more than 5,300 people in French nursing homes. To try to stem its progression, the residents live isolated for more than a month, without contact neither with their close relations, prohibited from visit, nor with their room neighbors, as far as possible. "The Covid kills, but confinement also affects," said Brigitte Klinkert, president of the Haut-Rhin departmental council, guest of Europe 1 Tuesday morning.
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To better understand the situation of retirement homes in this department hit hard by the health crisis, and to adapt the necessary response to each, a campaign of serological tests was launched on Tuesday in voluntary establishments. They will allow to know precisely who, among the residents and among the staff, has already been in contact with the virus, and is in fact immune.
"Reduce the isolation" of residents
In all, 1,900 people will be screened. "We will thus be able to adapt the confinement rules, possibly reduce isolation, and reorganize activities to have a certain social life again in the nursing homes", rejoices Brigitte Klinkert.
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"This is part of the unprecedented mobilization of the Departmental Council alongside the Ehpad," she salutes. Brigitte Kilnkert also sees in this test campaign the occasion for a first feedback before a more global mobilization, "on a regional scale".