"Isolation not the right strategy" says top French Covid-19 specialist

The President of the French Scientific Committee on Coronavirus, Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, acknowledged in an interview with the Catholic daily La Croix that "Isolation is not the right strategy; but it is the least bad of the solutions that were possible in France, in mid-March 2020. [1]

The Chinese central government has never imposed home isolation in infected areas (all of eastern China), except in Hubei province. This measure was not intended to fight the disease, but to politically retake control of an area where the local government had disregarded the epidemic causing further deaths, which had been interpreted by the population as the withdrawal of the "mandate of heaven”. [2]

Professor Delfraissy now recommends carrying out "massive tests at the end of the isolation". As stated by him, "Today, we have the capacity to provide between 5,000 to 8,000 tests per day, but not more. Such tests require a certain number of products, some of which come from China and the United States. However, these products no longer arrive in sufficient quantities."

These figures are disputed by laboratory technicians and do not explain why, as of 22 March, the French government has still not contacted other foreign manufacturers. Above all, he fails to explain why there should be "massive tests at the end of the isolation" (which Professor Delfraissy intends to prolong) and not as a means "to get out of the isolation".