Illustration of a drive in to carry out coronavirus tests in Brest.

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AFP

The High Authority for Health (HAS) announced this Thursday that it would give its opinion on Friday "on the relevance of the use of saliva tests in the strategy for the management of the Covid-19 disease", specifying the announcement made by the Minister of Health.

Olivier Véran had, in fact, announced earlier in the afternoon that the HAS would render "imminently" an opinion on the saliva screening tests for the new coronavirus, before a possible deployment of this alternative to the sampling in the nostrils.

"We are now imminently awaiting the opinion of the High Authority for Health to determine which audiences" could be concerned "and under what conditions these saliva tests could be carried out", he declared during a conference of press on the situation of the Covid-19 epidemic in France, now called to be held every week.

The saliva tests mentioned are those which consist in looking in the laboratory for the presence of the genetic material of the coronavirus from a saliva sample, an easier, faster and less uncomfortable gesture than the reference sample by swab in the nostrils.

Studies were launched this summer, including the Covisal study in Guyana, to check whether the virus is found in sufficient quantity in saliva for this type of test to be reliable.

The opinion of the HAS "follows the analysis of the first data of the Covisal study", specifies the health authority in an invitation to an online press point tomorrow, Friday, at 5 pm.

An order of five million antigenic tests

It should be noted that the minister also announced, this Thursday, the order of "five million antigenic tests, which will have arrived by the beginning of October", and work "on a deployment strategy" of these rapid tests, without waiting for the result of the experiments launched in recent days and the "recommendations of the scientific authorities".

Antigenic tests are carried out from samples taken from the nostrils (“nasopharyngeal”).

But unlike the RT-PCR virological test, which requires laboratory analysis to detect the genetic material of the coronavirus, the antigenic test identifies the proteins of the virus which allows a result on the spot, "generally in less than 30 minutes", recalled the minister.

If the result is positive, this "diagnostic orientation" test must be confirmed by an RT-PCR test.

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