The massive screening campaign in the northern city of Roubaix ends Saturday, with only 5,000 tests carried out since the start of the week.

A very low figure which does not prevent professionals from learning from this device, which has to be deployed again for vaccination.

REPORTAGE

If there is no epidemic runaway in France, the number of cases detected daily is still at a rather high level, with more than 21,000 new carriers of Covid-19 identified in the last 24 hours.

The curves are increasing while many French people are still reluctant to be tested.

Massive screening campaigns are not mobilizing, as was the case in Havre, Charleville-Mézières and Roubaix, where the operation is due to end on Saturday.

There, barely 5,000 tests on 96,000 inhabitants were carried out.

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"Less concerned" populations?

At the end of the week, most of the sampling agents waited in front of empty boxes, with the impression of waiting for the client in this large municipal hall in the city center.

The few residents who have taken the test regret this lack of interest on the part of the population in a city which nevertheless broke incidence rate records last fall.

"We always say that it happens to others, but that it never happens to us. People do not care," laments a Roubaisien.

"I do not understand why they are not motivated to come. It does not scare them any more, whereas there have been deaths all the same. It is worrying", adds another.

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In Roubaix, the population is fragile and many inhabitants are in a precarious situation.

They are missing out on an important preventive operation.

"The people we wanted to reach the most do not come because they feel a little removed from the care process, due to social difficulties", explains Sarah Boulanger, head of the center.

"Maybe they don't care."

The results of the sequencing "in a week"

And even if it was not massive, this screening will remain useful to better understand the health situation of the city, especially since it reveals a very low positivity rate, just over 1%.

"It reassures us about the circulation of the virus which is currently low and secondly on the search for the famous English variant", assures Doctor Dancoine, an assistant in charge of health.

"We will probably have the results of the sequencing carried out in a week."

At least, this large-scale organization for massive screening will have been an ideal repeat for the general public vaccination campaign, impatiently awaited in Roubaix in a few months.