INTERVIEW
"No serological test is capable of delivering you the immune passport which everyone dreams of deconfinement", warned Saturday the High authority of Health. These tests will be useful to confirm a diagnosis or for nursing staff and in collective accommodation, she specifies, but are not intended to be performed in series. "The pivotal test after May 11 is the PCR", approves Lionel Barrand, medical biologist, president of the National Union of Young Medical Biologists (SJBM), guest of Europe 1 Monday morning.
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"Some believe they are falsely immune"
This test takes the form of a swab, a kind of long cotton swab, which must be pushed into the patient's nose to collect his DNA. In a few hours, it reveals the possible presence of the virus. The serological test is carried out by blood test, and only indicates the presence of antibodies: we know if the virus was contracted, but we do not know when. According to Lionel Barrand, the practice of this large-scale test would even be counterproductive. "If the test comes back positive, we cannot know if we are still contagious. Believing themselves to be falsely immunized, people could lift the barrier measures too soon, go to see their relatives ...", he explains.
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At the moment, there is also no indication that patients who have been infected once with the virus are therefore immune. "We do not know if the antibodies are protective. There is a risk of reinfection, especially if the virus mutates," said Lionel Barrand. He forbids the large-scale practice of PCR tests. "It is the only one that responds to the strategy in force to fight the epidemic: test, trace, isolate." As of May 11, the government has promised 700,000 PCR tests per week.