The institution also underlines an “uncertain” efficiency of the device deployed after the first confinement.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
It was the central pillar of the strategy of “test, trace, isolate”. The tracing of the contacts of the patients of the COVID-19 may have cost more than 600 million euros since the start of the epidemic, announces the Court of Auditors in a report Published Tuesday, December 6 , which concludes that “the uncertain efficiency” of the device.
In just over two years – from May 2020 to August 2022 – contact Tracing, implemented at the exit of the first confinement, in May 2020, made it possible to reach 32 million people diagnosed positive at the Coronavirus and More than 22 million of their contacts “at risk”, specifies the Court of Auditors.
This tool for combating epidemic consists in contacting by phone, SMS or email the people diagnosed positive “so that they identify the people with whom they were in contact”, then to inform the risk of the risk taken (while retaining the anonymity of the positive person) and to communicate to them the prevention instructions. To operate this information system, health insurance has recruited en masse “thousands of contract workers” and “set up departmental platforms of investigators”.
“partial respect for Prevention instructions “
Since the launch of contacts follow -up, the organization “has attached more than 32 million positive people and nearly 22.7 million contacts, first by phone then essentially by SMS or by email” , summarizes the Court of Auditors. If the workforce has now been “strongly reduced” (from 6,500 full -time equivalents in 2021 to 350 in September), total expenses at the expense of the security “could exceed 600 million euros” at the end of the year, As part of the 2020 to 2022.
All for “an uncertain global efficiency”. “Without contact Tracing, it is likely that contamination would have been more numerous or rapid, and their stronger impact on hospitals,” said the Court of Auditors. Nevertheless, the effects on contamination and hospitalizations “cannot be quantified in the absence of scientific evaluation”.
Very generally efficient within twenty-four hours following the declaration of contact cases, this device, however, touched “only a potentially minority” part of its target, because most of the infected have “declared any person contact “.
On average, half of the people diagnosed positive did not declare any contact cases between 2020 and 2021. And in those who have been attached, “the rare elements of analysis available show partial respect (…) prevention instructions “.
The Court of Auditors thus calls for “designing a more effective device”, which can be “activated and then deactivated within rapid deadlines in the event of new large -scale epidemics”. Contact Tracing, widely replaced by vaccination as the main tool for combating COVID-19, is supposed to stop at the end of January, except new extension by law.