Jean Castex announced last Friday that specific time slots would be set up in the laboratory for priority patients.

But medical biologists evoke other avenues to make this prioritization effective: prescriptions, but also a specific telephone platform.

Prime Minister Jean Castex announced last Friday that specific time slots would soon be put in place for priority patients.

Among them, those who have symptoms of Covid-19, contact cases and healthcare workers.

The objective is that they are received in priority in the analysis laboratories.

A prescription for priority patients

In fact, this announcement by the Prime Minister is not new but can it be enough to resolve the congestion in the laboratories?

"In Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, we no longer meet the deadlines", assures the medical biologist Arthur Clément.

For him, there is only one solution so that the queues really work for priority people: "we must obtain a prescription for patients for whom the test is really urgent: symptomatic patients, but even more patients symptomatic with signs of seriousness or comorbidity, "he continues at the microphone of Europe 1.

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A telephone platform that works only on a doctor's call

Without a prescription, the secretaries of medical analysis laboratories find themselves sorting out patients who frequently lie about their symptoms.

Another avenue to accelerate this prioritization of tests: a telephone platform set up by the Ile-de-France regional health agency, which works only on call from a doctor who refers a patient with symptoms.

In less than 12 hours, the person is received and tested as a priority.

3,000 files have already been processed in one month thanks to this system which could be extended to other regions.

"We will succeed in this challenge, we just need to give us a few weeks to adapt to such a demand", entrusts an analysis laboratory director at Europe 1, before concluding: "the hospitals were overloaded in March-April, now it's our turn.