Covid-19: the DGS recommends prioritizing screening tests – LCI

9.5 million. This is the number of Covid-19 screening tests carried out between December 31 and January 6. A record level which can be explained by the protocol applied in schools and the rapid spread of the Omicron variant which lead to “a strong tensioning of the screening system”, warns the Directorate General of Health in a statement released Friday.

The health authorities are drawing the contours of an adaptation of the screening system to “avoid any saturation situation”, by relying on a system of prioritization of access to tests in certain cases. “It is appropriate that the people considered as having priority to benefit from a diagnostic test be taken care of quickly”, writes the DGS.

In detail, she asked health professionals to screen as a priority symptomatic people and contacts at risk, those who have a medical prescription or who have already performed a self-test with a positive result. People who have to carry out a mandatory test as part of the application of border rules are also priority. Those who need a negative test to travel abroad are also in “wherever possible”, the statement clarified.

Conversely, “other situations must be considered as non-priority”, continues the DGS, which mentions in particular “the realization of test of ‘comfort’ aiming to obtain a proof in the sanitary pass”.

Finally, the DGS recommends that health workers refer asymptomatic vaccinated people to self-tests.

Recommendations that could be particularly difficult to implement, as evidenced by this manager of a Parisian test center, Saturday morning.

For the latter, the intention is good, but it seems almost impossible to filter, in the queues, the different profiles of people coming to be tested.