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With virus cases rising anew, France is struggling to administer enough tests to keep up with demand. One reason: Many testing labs are closed so that their staff can take summer vacation, just as signs of a second wave are building.
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Doctors and experts say the vacation crunch is just part of a larger web of failures in Frances testing strategy – a strategy that even the governments own virus advisory panel this week called disorganized and “insufficient.”
“First, there is a lack of workers to do the testing. If we dont ask all the health workers to be available by mobilizing all of them, there are just not enough people,” emergency services doctor Christophe Prudhomme told The Associated Press at his hospital in the Paris suburb of Bobigny.
“And then its a matter of organization,” he said, urging regional health agencies “to organize testing so that its not the citizen who has to take his phone and try to call seven or eight labs in order to get an appointment that will take place only next week.”
Testing troubles have plagued the U.S. and other countries too. But France's August ritual of fleeing cities for weeks of holiday rest on seashores, mountainsides or grandmas country house is an added tangle. “Closed for vacation” signs dangle from door after door across Paris this month, from bakeries to shoe shops and iconic cafes.
>> A strange August in Paris: How the city is adapting to keep visitors safe during the pandemic
Doctors offices and labs are no exception. Their staff need a rest more than ever this difficult year. And with Parisians vacationing in the provinces, demand for medical services usually plunges in the summer.
But this August, socially distanced lines snake outside the scattered Paris labs that remain open, from the Left Bank to the citys northern canals. Trying to get a test appointment can take a week or more. So can getting results.
Thats worrying news in a country that saw renowned hospitals nearly drown with virus patients in the first wave – in part because of inadequate testing — and has already lost more than 30,000 lives to the pandemic.
Two months of strict lockdown and soul-searching about Frances early mistakes seemed to put the country on track to vanquish COVID-19. But now its again recording more than 1,000 new cases a day, and the number of patients in intensive care units is edging up, for the first time in months.
Covid-19: Highly likely France will see a second wave in autumn or winter
France is in better shape than last time to keep ahead of new infections — but testing is key.
“The virus didnt disappear at all. … The contamination is continuing, and amplifying in some regions,” said François Blanchecotte, president of the Union of Medical Biologists, who has been in the forefront of French testing efforts. “We have to adapt the testing strategy to this evolution.”
He argues for a more targeted policy that takes into account lab capacities, such as organizing tests at beach resorts or tourist sites where young people are congregating.
Hes particularly annoyed at a blanket government campaign to test 1.5 million Parisians to better understand how the virus is spreading. The free test vouchers were distributed just as dozens of labs shut down for vacation, worsening bottlenecks.
“We are at a crossroads. Weve seen a situation of disorder in Paris, in which labs were not ready to face thousands of people at the same time. Its a nightmare to get an appointment,” Blanchecotte said.
The government didnt order anyone to skip vacation, which French workers see as a hard-won, fundamental right. But it issued a special decree late last month authorizing certain medical students, firefighters and rescue workers to administer coronavirus nasal swabs.
That was too late to stop an outbreak in the town of Quiberon in the western region of Brittany, unleashed by a night club party last month. Authorities urged everyone in the area to get tested — a mammoth task on a peninsula where the population swells from 5,000 to 60,000 in the Read More – Source
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