REPORTAGE
The number of new cases of coronavirus continues to increase in France: 785 were confirmed between Sunday and Monday according to a latest report from the Directorate General of Health. In the Paris region, Seine-Saint-Denis is a particularly affected department. To break the chains of contamination, investigators from the Bobigny Primary Health Insurance Fund, transformed into a "contact tracing" or "anti-covid brigade" cell, are busy. They are about 26 agents mobilized, and ten more people are expected to reinforce at the end of the week.
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The possibility of anonymity
Facing her computer, Melissa begins her health investigation. "For contact cases, it will be all the people you have seen without masks and without respecting the social distancing of one meter", she tells a Covid-19 patient. The latter gives her the names of the people she could have infected, before the onset of these symptoms. These contact cases will be called one by one to be notified and tested. The "zero" cases, called first, must self-isolate for 14 days.
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Online, Melissa offers patients to remain anonymous. "Some are afraid and think that maybe something wrong," she analyzes. "This unblocks a lot of situations, especially in the professional environment". Investigators can go back up to seven days for asymptomatic patients and each patient has, on average, three contact cases.
No case between the mesh of the net
The objective: that no case of contamination passes through the cracks, while the situation is deteriorating in Seine-Saint-Denis. More than 300 people are contacted every day and investigators make sure they have masks and means of self-isolation, while awaiting test results. In Bobigny, within the tracing unit, 12 languages are mastered, to address the entire population.
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"We were, at the beginning of July, at 30 cases per day. There we are between 80 and 100, so we have almost multiplied by three in a month", notes Aurélie Combas-Richard, general manager of the health insurance department. "The virus is really a race against time. We really have to be able to complete the investigations in 24 hours, we have to go faster than the virus if you want to." By retracing the chains of contamination, the agents realize that in summer, family reunions take place, evenings between young adults and vacations, during which barrier gestures are not respected.