Tours (AFP)

In this Tours laboratory, the queue is always full but the public has changed.

"There is real concern. The public is younger, more family", notes François Blanchecotte, at the head of the ABO + group in Indre-et-Loire, referring to a "historic" situation.

"It was time to confine", launches the president of the National Union of Biologists, met Friday on the first day of new confinement.

He notes that for some time, the trend has been worrying.

"In cities like Joué-lès-Tours (38,000 inhabitants) where the population concentration is high, there are more than 20% of positive cases. In many large metropolises, the number of positive cases will explode", estimates- he does.

According to Mr. Blanchecotte, this "will generate an influx to hospitals over the next two weeks".

He observed "in front of the explosion of positive cases, a real concern".

"The audience is younger, more family-friendly. The median of positivity has increased. A lot of young people are positive," he says.

Yoann, a 21-year-old sociology student, confirms.

"I have had a temperature for two days. It worries me. So I prefer to take a little time to be tested" with the hope of being "reassured".

This situation, which the biologist qualifies as "historic", requires constant adaptation: "We had to change our working methods, order in markets, particularly in Asia, that we did not know. We had to buy machines. Most of the major technical platforms went through in three-shifts, seven days a week.

- "holes in the racket" -

Who says new organization says "hiring plan": "We are 50,000 in our branch. More than 4,000 people have joined laboratories in recent months," he explains.

And that's without counting "the liberal nurses, masseurs, who come to help us".

The Chambray-lès-Tours technical platform was originally built to handle 3,000 to 4,000 patients per day.

Today, with the Covid-19 epidemic, staff are treating double that.

The results are known in less than twenty-four hours.

And for emergencies, in six or eight hours.

Time savings resulting from less and less restrictive methods.

"We do not take more than one nostril. The swab is thinner and loaded into a tube which contains and neutralizes the virus. A few weeks ago, we had to do a triple packaging", specifies Mr. Blanchecotte.

Tubes arrive from all collection sites in sealed boxes.

They are unpacked under sterile hoods which allow a flow of filtered air.

The collectors are then put on racks, then pass on machines which will extract the RNA from the virus before amplifying it dozens of times in order to better identify it.

"The positives and the negatives are sent to the laboratory's computer system. They go through two channels: to provide information to Public Health France and to Contact Covid which will trigger, with the ARS and departmental CPAMs, signals to investigators who can call potential contact cases ".

Other healthcare professionals (doctors, pharmacists, state-certified nurses) will soon be able to perform antigenic tests, which are faster than traditional PCR tests.

The president of the National Union of Biologists is not convinced.

"Scientific authorities show that the sensitivity of [antigenic] tests drops to 50% for asymptomatic. We will miss a lot of people. Watch out for holes in the racket!", He warns.

© 2020 AFP