Dr Gérald Kierzek: “The more we test, the more we increase the risk”

Emergency doctor Gérald Kierzek, also medical director of Doctissimo, once again gave a very clear opinion on the question of the tests carried out in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is on his Twitter account on January 24 that the head of service at the Hôtel Dieu explains that the tests carried out to detect the virus are “too numerous”, resulting in “unnecessary risk” according to him.

“Medically useless and shamefully expensive tests”

“It is illusory and useless to want to test when an entire population tends to become contaminated! It is illusory and useless to trace when the virus is too contagious! Despite all their good will, the Health Insurance teams have not been able to identify contact cases for weeks. It is illusory and useless to isolate contact cases when there are too many of them! But especially when the disease comes down in the vast majority of cases to mild symptoms and naturally leads to collective immunity!” he declared on January 5 in his Tribune “Should we really continue to test?”

Today, he goes further and estimates the cost of these tests at 1.5 billion euros per month, and adds: “Tests that are unmanageable on a daily basis for parents and companies, medically useless and shamefully expensive for society at the expense of other investments”.

“The more we test, the more we increase the risk”

Gérald Kierzek also shares on his thread a message from Alice Desbiolles, public health doctor, epidemiologist and author. For her, PCR, antigen or other self-tests are not completely risk-free. “Faced with the multiplication and repetition of nasopharyngeal samples, serious complications are beginning to be described, in particular breaches of the anterior floor of the base of the skull associated with a risk of meningitis., began by asserting the scientist.

For Alice Desbiolles, these potential complications, although rare, “can be serious” and “should encourage us not to carry out unnecessary tests. All the more so in view of the exponential increase in the number of tests carried out in recent weeks..

A low risk but a very large number of tests

The National Academy of Medicine had thus recalled that the nasopharyngeal swabs are not without risk. She recommends as follows:

• In children, to favor saliva samples for their safety and acceptability
• Do not place the patient’s head in hyperextension during sampling, but keep it in a natural position.

Given the number of tests carried out, shouldn’t this admittedly low risk of complications be taken into account? France has seen a very significant increase in the number of tests: from 700,000 on average per day in March 2021, we rose to a record of more than 2.5 million on a single day in January!