RE: French News now19 Mar 2020 15:30
Google Translate - French news
City medical testing laboratories have joined the speed race to do as many tests as possible of coronavirus infection, but, like other health professions, they sometimes face a lack of resources.
ADVERTISING
Ads by Teads
At the moment, we are only testing liberal health professionals who have symptoms - fever - cough - and even with this single population we lack tests, says Dr. Lionel Barrand, president of the Union of Young Medical Biologists (SJBM), located Alsace, a region heavily affected.
We're all out of date, resuscitation, it's all cracking. Our goal is to give the hospital a breath of fresh air. Allow to manage in an outpatient setting everything that can be managed in an outpatient setting.
But not to mention patients treated for heavy chronic diseases, chemotherapy, anticoagulant treatments... You have to take them in the lab and you can't leave them in the dark for two months, says this caregiver.
"We need masks and stocks of test kits"
Deliveries of test kits expected on Thursday are expected to improve Alsatian capacity in the city.
To do a broader screening, masks and stocks of advanced test kits are needed, as well as Jeremiah Bayette, a medical biologist at a testing platform in one of the large medical testing laboratories in the south of the country.
To do more and relieve hospital congestion, the solution is also the deployment of sites specifically dedicated to coronavirus, to avoid its transmission but also to pool resources, adds Dr Boris Loquet, President of the URPS (Union (regional health professionals) and the PACA regional biologists' union.
Drive-in picks
Some organize to take samples from their car parks to avoid contaminating other patients. This is already happening in the South-West, Dr. Loquet told AFP, pointing out that a single individual protective equipment (EPI) can be used to take multiple samples. A solution to the margins, but in a war must be on the front line, believes this biologist from Marseille.
Another method used by a private lab in Alsace: a patient in her car takes the sample herself with a swab (a long cotton swab inserts deep into the nose or mouth, N.D.L.R.) and puts it back in a receptacle without contact with the staff laboratory, an Alsatian doctor reports online.
Meanwhile, the production plants are running at full capacity.
Several tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been granted the CE mark valid at European level, which assumes that the manufacturer has demonstrated the performance of its device, according to the Medicines Agency (ANSM). Among these, that of the company Novacyt developed by Primerdesign. The South Korean Seengen test is one of them.
"Home tests"
In the short or long term these tests will be validated for their speed of rendering, says Dr. Loquet about automatons that give results in an hour, instead of the current average of 3 to 4 hours.
In addition, in-house tests developed by virologists in large p
Sign In
Follow the stocks
