With around a million tests per week to screen for Covid-19, laboratories are overwhelmed and starting to run out of reagents.

These chemicals are used to determine whether the test is positive or not.

Insufficient production, too late delivery: some tests must be discarded. 

While the coronavirus epidemic continues to circulate in France, the queues are lengthening in front of the analysis laboratories.

If you want to get tested, you are probably already aware that you will have to patiently take your trouble: since the start of the school year, the screening centers are overwhelmed, and therefore the time to receive its results is long.

With one million tests per week, the rate is one of the highest: France is the third country in Europe to screen the most.

In addition, laboratories are starting to run out of reagents, these chemicals which allow the sample to be analyzed and to determine whether the test is positive.

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With around 20% more tests each week, reagent orders are struggling to keep up.

"Each time we have reached the technical level to render within a reasonable time, we raise the bar", notes François Blanchecotte, national president of the union of biologists.

“At one point, it's true that things get stuck! An industrial company, it does not adapt with three times as many orders. We have seen it with the production of masks in France, the time that it has request." 

Tests thrown for lack of treatment 

Suppliers are also sought after by all countries of the world.

As a result, reagent delivery times are lengthening and some tests are thrown away without being able to be processed on time.

Due to lack of results, positive patients are not isolated and contamination progresses.

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"If we want to be able to warn people infected by the person being tested, the result must be returned before the person has infected everyone, otherwise it is useless, except to count the sick! ", underlines Bertrand Legrand, general practitioner in Tourcoing.

He rants against unnecessary testing and "wasted" reagents.

Many GPs thus request that tests be performed on prescription.