• In Nantes, pharmacies that offer tests without an appointment are rare.

  • It must be said that while some are increasing their capacities, others have preferred to give up in the face of too much demand.

The place is now well known to Nantes residents.

Seven days a week, a queue of several hundred meters stretches across the parking lot of the Intermarché de l'Eraudière.

The pharmacy in this shopping mall (which has recently rented a building just behind it to increase its capacity and reduce waiting times) is indeed one of the few to carry out antigen tests without an appointment, all day long, and especially on Sunday.

Hundreds, even thousands of inhabitants, cross the city daily to come and get their noses tickled, lured by free slots on Doctolib before realizing on the spot that here, the first to arrive is the first to be detected. .

"I came twice with my children, then for myself," says a mother.

There was a wait, that's for sure, but that's the only solution I found.

I'd rather wait two hours than two days for a lab appointment!

»

Welcome to Nantes: I make an appointment for an antigen test at 3:30 p.m. and I find myself in the queue without an appointment, estimated wait at 6 hours.

It closes at 7 p.m. 🖕🏻🙃

— Nanou ⭐️⭐️ 🍁 (@NanouGrn) January 10, 2022

In the Nantes agglomeration, half of the approximately 150 pharmacies would offer these rapid tests.

But those who practice them without an appointment seem much rarer... and do not shout it from the rooftops.

It is even difficult to know since no list exists, everything is done by word of mouth, and for good reason.

“It is very fluctuating because the colleagues sometimes organize themselves day by day, according to their means, explains Denis Millet, co-president of the union of pharmacists of Loire-Atlantique.

Lately, many have preferred to stop or reduce walk-in time slots because they were completely overwhelmed.

They are limited by their premises, the equipment, but also the lack of arms.

»

“Our teams were exhausted”

At the Atout Sud pharmacy in Rezé, getting tested without having made an appointment has not been possible for a week. “We had gone from 400 requests during the holidays to 600 or 700 tests to be carried out per day since the start of the school year, says Mehdi Founini, holder of the pharmacy. Our teams were exhausted, we finished at 11 p.m. or midnight, the time to transmit all the results, so we unfortunately preferred to stop. We do our best but we have to constantly reorganize according to the announcements and the resulting demand, sometimes in an anarchic way. In an attempt to satisfy everyone, this pharmacist like others, however, chose to unlock part of their slots the same day.

So how do you locate an emergency pharmacy?

Ask relatives or colleagues, but also scour social networks, where several addresses circulate.

On Doctolib, some pharmacies also update the terms of access in black and white (such as that of Dervallières, Atlantis or Nantes Children), but you still have to have the time to methodically go through the whole list.

In one week, 500,000 tests were carried out in Pays-de-la-Loire, where contamination continues to soar.

Pharmacists hope for a small drop in requests in the coming days, in particular thanks to the relaxation of the protocol at school.

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  • Coronavirus

  • Screening

  • Covid-19

  • Society

  • Nantes

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