One of the essential tools in this stage of deconfinement is to massively test the population at the slightest suspicion of Covid-19. The government's objective: 700,000 tests per week, as announced by Prime Minister Édouard Philippe on April 28 at the National Assembly. Except that there may be a little delay in ignition because, as revealed by France Info, France is left with a stock of a million swabs not suitable for performing these biological tests, information confirmed to Europe 1.
Throat swabs
Swabs are long cotton swabs that are pushed into a patient's nose to see if they are infected with the coronavirus. To increase the rate of testing, the French government has ordered 20 robots from the Chinese company MGI, capable of analyzing 2,000 tests per day once the samples have been taken.
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In addition to the robots, France has ordered swabs from the same Chinese company, but problem: some of these are simply not the right ones. Instead of being usable in the nose, these are swabs for swabs in the throat.
Suspended deliveries, risk of false negatives
According to our information, the deliveries of these swabs to the teaching hospitals which hold the Chinese robots have therefore been temporarily suspended. Was there a problem with the order, or did the Chinese company not deliver the right material? The question remains. Today it is above all a question of knowing what to do with these unsuitable swabs, and on this point, the Ministry of Health announces that it has just sought the opinion of the French microbiology society.
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But according to a first laboratory contacted, there is very little chance that these samples from the throat are useful for something because they do not have the same sensitivity. "We could end up with many false negative tests," says a biologist, that is to say that the patient is well infected, but the test does not detect it. Conclusion: this stock of a million long cotton swabs could simply be useless.