A massive screening campaign will very likely take place in the Lille metropolitan area in the coming weeks.

This will necessarily have to be accompanied by monitoring of the isolation of infected people, according to specialists, to bring the coronavirus down sustainably.

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To detect as finely as possible the sources of contamination, massive screenings will be organized in Saint-Étienne, Le Havre and in a third city, which will very likely be Lille.

In the northern conurbation, to have a real and rapid photograph of the circulation of the virus, Professor Philippe Froguel of the Institut Pasteur de Lille advocates the use of all available tests, namely PCR, antigen and saliva.

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Objective: test at least 60% of the population

These tests would be carried out in three or four days, in pharmacies, but also in large spaces that will be made available to laboratories, such as the Zenith in Lille.

"By doing all of this at the same time, we should be able to test between 60 and 80% of the population by not forcing anyone, but by explaining that it is for the good of everyone", defends Professor Philippe Froguel, who wants at all costs "to delay this third wave, while waiting for the vaccines to arrive and definitively settle the question".

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Once these tests have been carried out, the question of the isolation of positive cases remains unresolved.

This isolation is very complicated, if not impossible in certain disadvantaged districts of the metropolis, where there is promiscuity, with large families in cramped social housing.

"Ant work"

For Christophe Lamarre, general practitioner in Roubaix, strengthening the monitoring of infected people is therefore necessary: ​​"We must go to people, in the vicinity, and almost do door-to-door. We must stay with people, their explain, see the possibilities of housing to ventilate, to isolate people at risk. In fact, there is an ant work to avoid these family contaminations. "

Without measures to strictly isolate positive cases, the virus will continue to circulate and massive screening will have been for nothing.