The fight against coronavirus goes on within companies as well… After nursing homes, companies and other professional facilities are getting antigenic tests. Employers have been authorized since October 30, 2020 to offer their employees to get tested within the company via this kind of test, for a quick result within 15 minutes only.
Nevertheless, tests must be performed by a medical practitioner (nurses, occupational physician…) and results are only told to people getting tested, in accordance with medical secrecy. These antigenic tests are deployed within companies and are fully taken in charge by the employer. The campaign has already started: “We are beginning this week in the Paris area, in a company from the construction industry where a contact-case has been detected, as well as in a transport company. They want to be quickly reassured there is no cluster” Medisur cofounder and CEO Edouard Rauline told Actu.fr.
“Setting up new quick tests enable to answer employers who are more into the testing strategy to make sure their employees are as safe as possible at work, and it does not jeopardize the economical activity” Minister of Labor Elisabeth Borne said on October 30 in a release. She went on: “Rallying all stakeholders of the society is crucial to put an end to the epidemic” she said.
When can you get tested in your company? It should not be made “at any time nor haphazardly” epidemiologist Pascal Crépey says. According to him, testing shall be only conducted in case there is a suspicious Covid case or a proven case. Tests can also be targeting: “within a very company, one shall track people who have been in contact with the Covid-19-positive case and test them to identify the contamination chain” he adds.
Testing people in companies has been requiring for a while already… Even though testing campaigns in companies have been banned during the first lockdown exit by the government, things have changed. This past October 18, MEDEF president Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux told the JDD it was crucial to allow companies to perform these quick tests, especially in the most impacted sectors like events and culture. A measure that can be applied now, at least in places allowed to open during the new lockdown.
