3rd dose, tests in schools: the logistical challenges of Véran’s announcements – The HuffPost

COVID-19 – Fighting commotion in France. To slow down the progression of 5th wave which strikes the country while the health crisis seemed (almost) behind, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran announced Thursday, November 26 thestarting the third dose for adults, or 19 million people (6 million having already received this booster dose). This injection will ultimately condition the obtaining of the health pass.

This announcement creates a real logistical challenge. Admittedly, the minister assured that “more than 25 million messenger vaccines are currently stored in establishments, but also in doctors and pharmacies in town. (…) There will be vaccines for everyone, and everyone can be vaccinated on time ”. But the human resources, while Doctolib is taken by storm, they are still limited, alert professionals.

Olivier Véran, for example, asked pharmacies to open on Sundays. But the president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France (FSPF) Philippe Besset warns in the Parisian: “We are not going to do it alone, or not quickly enough. The industry is short of 10,000 people, people are starting to be exhausted, and we also need to play our primary role in delivering drugs. ” Same concern for Jean-Marie Guillermin, vice-president of the council of the Order of pharmacists in Occitania interviewed by France 3: “It will be complicated to manage (…) There will be a wait”.

300 new vaccination centers

To support pharmacies and doctors, vaccination centers will also make a comeback. 300 centers will reopen “from this weekend (Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 November, Editor’s note) ”In addition to the 1100 others who had not closed, said the Minister of Health Thursday evening. All to avoid traffic jams, because only 24 hours after government announcements, 1.2 million people had already made an appointment on the Doctolib platform.

Thus, in several cities and departments of France, such as Marseille, Nièvre or Sarthe, everything is done to accommodate as many people as possible. This therefore requires the reopening of closed centers, the widening of time slots in those which still received the public, and consequently the recruitment of staff.

A process that will last several days: on Europe 1, the Health Assistant for the city of Marseille, Michèle Rubirola, has scheduled the opening of the exhibition center by Wednesday while the mayor of Nevers, Denis Thuriot, announced the opening of the vaccination center “ at the beginning of next week at the latest ”in the Journal of the Center.

Schoolchildren tests, a challenge for laboratories

Still to fight against the 5th wave but also to avoid penalizing children who cannot be vaccinated and suffer from the closure of classes, the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer announced a new protocol for Covid cases in the classroom on Thursday, November 25. Until now, a class had to close if a student tested positive, forcing all of their classmates to isolate themselves. From next week only the sick child will stay at home, the others will have to be tested and can return to school if they are negative.

This protocol, already tested in 10 departments since October, will therefore be extended. But it is not the unanimity of the education unions, some of which have been contacted by the Huffpost do not hide their skepticism. “The ministry’s objective was not to exceed 48 hours to obtain the results of the tests, but we realize that the process is too long and that the 48 hours are not respected, thus indicated. Élisabeth Allain-Moreno, national secretary of the teachers’ union UNSA. However, the longer you wait before closing a class, the more you run the risk of the virus spreading. ”

The delays, says the union representative, come from the laboratories, which are unable to keep up. The latter is also likely to accelerate with this automation of tests while the incidence rate now reaches 238 cases per 100,000 inhabitants among 0-9 year olds, according to data collected by Covid Tracker.

The problems are especially likely to appear in certain territories where “there are no mobile teams that we can send to schools, so the students go to the labs, but this creates a real overload”, confirms the Parisian François Blanchecotte, president of the union of biologists. “At the height of the crisis, we had hired 12,000 people,” he adds. However, many have left. And some areas of the country are less dense in labs. It will be uneven. ”

Note that PCR tests for adults will only be valid for 24 hours instead of 48 hours for the health pass. This should also contribute to the increase in the number of tests to be analyzed and lengthen the response time.

See also on The HuffPost: Covid-19: Véran rules out containment or curfew against the 5th wave