France is carrying out 900,000 Covid-19 tests every week

France has reached "the historic level" of 900,000 Covid-19 tests every week,  government spokesperson Gabriel Attal has said.

Medical workers use swabs to do Covid-19 'PCR' tests on August 31, 2020, at a testing booth in Montreuil, near Paris. © AFP/Alain Jocard

"On Saturday (29 August) we passed the historic mark of 900,000 tests carried out in one week, which is enormous", said Gabriel Attal in an interview with the Grand Jury RTL radio station.

"We are going to continue to develop the capacity for 'no prescription' tests in the public space," he added.

• Paris makes free Covid-19 tests available citywide

Since Monday testing booths in front of district town halls allow Parisians who wish to be tested without a prescription.

30,000 new cases per week

"We now have an average of 30,000 new coronavirus cases per week. There is a magnifying glass effect because we are testing much more and that's good (...), but "there is more than the magnifying glass effect", he stressed, inviting citizens to "be extremely vigilant".

Asked about saliva tests, Attal considered that "this is a research issue that is very strong", because we must ensure their reliability.

"The French President, in the last Defence Council, asked that we move much more quickly and intensify research on these subjects".

Objective: one million

The government's objective is to reach one million tests per week "in the short term", according to Health Minister Olivier Véran.

The government's message is that "everything is in our hands and in our masks", added Attal.