Besançon (AFP)
"Shadow professionals" engaged in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic, teams from four laboratories in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté have joined forces to multiply serological tests and create one of the largest screening platforms for France.
Every day, hundreds of blood samples arrive on the technical platform of the LPA analysis laboratory (Associated Proximity Laboratories) in Besançon to be subjected to serological tests. These allow you to find out if patients have already been affected by Covid-19.
The glass tubes with colored caps are arranged by a technician in a white coat on a robotic chain. They pass through a centrifuge to isolate the serum, then to machines which take this serum to submit it to different analyzes. All "Covid tubes" are then frozen for a year in a "serotheque".
Serological tests allow you to find out if a person has been exposed to Covid-19, by checking whether they have developed antibodies.
They are distinguished from virological tests, or PCR, which make it possible to say that a patient is infected at the time when the sample is taken, at the level of the nasopharyngeal mucosa.
"We treat blood with a reliable technique that we have tested and validated internally" and which corresponds to the recommendations of the High Authority for Health (HAS), explains to the midst of automatons Mathilde Boussard, medical biologist.
- 3,000 tests per day -
In just a few hours, biologists validate these analyzes, available during the day for the patient and his doctor. "It is the doctor who judges whether or not a patient needs a serology and gives him a prescription," notes Ms. Boussard.
For Vincent Lombardot, president of the LPA laboratory, it is "essential from an ethical point of view to stay within the framework of the treatment process, with a prescription and a doctor who will be able to analyze the results".
Given the scale of the challenge posed by the epidemic of the new coronavirus, the LPA, MED-LAB, BIOMED 21 and MEDILYS laboratories have decided to pool their equipment and their automated systems to ensure maximum serological tests, as requested by French health authorities.
They thus created the Bioteam group, which brings together 500 employees and 60 biologists, working on 40 sites in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and in the Grand Est. "We are able to mount up to 3,000 serological tests per day", underlines Mr. Lombardot.
- "Take bets" -
But to achieve this capacity, Bioteam had to "anticipate" and "take bets" on the types of reagents and machines to buy, while the recommendations of the HAS regarding their reliability were desired.
"We operated blind, intuitively, in a very particular period with international tensions in the supply of machines and reagents," reveals Mr. Lombardot.
The Bioteam group has invested 300,000 euros to buy the machines and reagents necessary for serology.
"There is a strong expectation at the level of serological tests on the part of the authorities" and "with their reimbursement by Health Insurance (official since Thursday) we expect even more requests," notes the biologist.
In the laboratories of the Bioteam group, a test costs 30 euros.
"Every day we go back to the information on the number of tests that we are able to perform, the number of tests actually done and the number of positive tests, so that the authorities can have precise epidemiological data", explains Mathilde Lugand from the LPA laboratory.
The increase in the number of Covid tests required "the involvement of all the staff", underlines Mr. Lombardot, while at least five hires on the Covid activity are planned within the group.
Mobilized for more than two months, the teams were keen to "participate in the national effort".
© 2020 AFP