Return of Covid tests: in Paris, how a pharmacy adapts to high demand

Siam Spencer, edited by Gauthier Delomez 07:48, March 31, 2022

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“Queue for Covid tests”, can we read on the panel placed in front of this pharmacy in the 15th arrondissement of Paris.

Inside, every five minutes, a new customer enters.

“Between ten and 20 tests per day ten days ago, and there we are at more than 100”, details the pharmacist, Lorraine Kadoche.

This professional must deal with the strong comeback of tests in pharmacies.

More than 217,000 new cases were recorded for the day on Tuesday, a record since February 8.

Faced with this new rush, the pharmacy had to revise its human resources upwards.

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The difficulty of managing "more than 100 tests per day"

“We no longer had samplers who came to do the tests, we did them ourselves”, indicates the pharmacist at the microphone of Europe 1. “There, we had to call on someone again because it was too difficult to manage more than 100 tests per day for the team."

Lorraine Kadoche is also annoyed by customers who enter the pharmacy without a mask.

For her, the end of her compulsory port explains the resurgence of cases.

"All the people who are positive do not respect any barrier gesture", she says.

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For many, customers are contact cases of co-workers.

This is the case for example of Nicolas, mask under his nose, who awaits the results in front of the test tent, on the sidewalk, a few meters from the pharmacy.

"I have a colleague who has the Covid. He was sick, so he got tested, and he was positive. As he reported, we are in contact", he says on Europe 1. At the end of this day, the tests speak for themselves as to the resurgence of the epidemic: a third were found to be positive.