How to make up for the lack of people who can perform tests? By increasing the number of people able to do so. This is why firefighters, rescuers, but also caregivers and health students are now authorized to take samples to test for Covid-19, according to a decree published this Saturday in the Official Journal . It specifies that state-certified nurses, students in odontology, maieutics and pharmacy, nursing assistants, firefighters, marine firefighters and rescuers from approved civil security associations with adequate training first aid workers can take a biological sample.
These are PCR virological tests for which the waiting times are now too long in many areas, particularly in Ile-de-France, where the lack of personnel and the high demand are leading to near saturation. A problem that could be accentuated as France has just strengthened its screening system, by making mandatory tests at airports for travelers from 16 countries classified as “red”.
An already extended possibility
“It takes a lot more people to take the samples. If we want to control the epidemic we have to test the population much more widely, ”said epidemiologist Catherine Hill on Saturday on Europe 1. "We focused on the outbreaks but it is a serious mistake, we must focus on the carriers of the virus," she warned while the Directorate General of Health (DGS) warned the day before that viral circulation was "sharply increasing" in the country, with more than 1,000 new cases per day.
The government has already extended the possibility of taking samples, initially reserved only for medical biologists, to 40,000 laboratory technicians.
The free distribution of masks approved
This decree also provides that the tests, which cost 54 euros, will be fully covered by Health Insurance even without a prescription.
The decree also ratifies the free distribution of masks to the most vulnerable French people, a measure announced by the Minister of Health Olivier Véran on Wednesday (40 million masks distributed to the 7 million French beneficiaries of complementary solidarity health, aid to payment of supplementary health and state medical aid).
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- Olivier Véran
- Laboratory
- Coronavirus
- Health