“The Covid-19 epidemic is starting again,” Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne launched on Tuesday before the National Assembly. A finding now indisputable, since the increase is flagrant.
As of Monday, November 28, 44,061 positive cases have been detected on average over a week, an increase of 39% compared to the previous week, according to data from Public Health France. The prime minister reported an increase of “almost 10% in hospitalizations for a week” and 22% in “critical care”, and 400 deaths last week.
“There is a very clear progression of the contaminations, and certainly very underestimated by the amount of evidence that has collapsed compared to a few months,” Antoine Flahault, an epidemiologist and director of the University’s Institute for Global Health, completed on BFMTV on Tuesday. from Geneva. .
The “new wave” is here
Can we now talk about the ninth wave of the epidemic? Elisabeth Borne did not hesitate. “This new wave reminds us: the virus has not disappeared, the epidemic strikes again, it kills again,” she said. She is also accompanied by Antoine Flahault.
“This wave is prior to the one last fall”, carried by the Delta variant, he specified.
In mid-November, he had already spoken to BFMTV.com: “We should see in the next few weeks in France a new wave, the ninth of this pandemic, carried by Omicron’s BQ.1.1 subvariant.”
An unprecedented triple epidemic
The situation is all the more worrying from a health point of view since this wave of Covid-19 “adds to a bout of bronchiolitis -the highest in the last ten years- and a particularly virulent seasonal flu epidemic”, announced the Prime Minister.
This triple epidemic turns out to be “seasonal.” “We are in a very particular conjunction with epidemics of bronchiolitis, influenza and Covid, not to mention the circulation of other winter viruses”, explained to BFMTV.com the infectologist Benjamin Davido, a reference for Covid-19 at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches. , in Hauts-de-Seine.
The urgent return of barrier gestures
“I make a solemn appeal: let us respect the barrier gestures. let’s wear the mask as soon as we are with fragile people or in crowded areas such as public transport”, Elisabeth Borne also requested during her speech at the Assembly.
However, this “call” to wear a mask on public transport is still not an obligation. “It is absolutely necessary to use it in confined places,” Armand Semerciyan, a general practitioner from Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine), asked Tuesday on BFMTV.
Benjamín Davido, believes that we should not “wait for the government says to put on the mask to put it on.”
But, as the end-of-year celebrations are fast approaching, it is always possible to reverse the trend and slow the spread of the epidemic in France.
“In a month, we can crush a rising wave” but for that we must “resume the habits of social distancing,” Philippe Amouyel, an epidemiologist and professor of public health at Lille University Hospital, told BFMTV.com.
The vaccination campaign is not satisfactory
In addition to barrier gestures, vaccination, particularly booster dose injections, remains one of the main weapons to stop the epidemic and relieve congestion in hospital services.
This Monday, 2 million people had received a booster vaccine against Covid-19 since the launch of the booster campaign on October 3 with bivalent vaccines. Between them, 1.8 million people have been injected with such vaccines, which target the parent strain and the Omicron strain of Covid.
According to the Ministry of Health, only 21% of people aged 80 or over and 37% of people aged 60 to 79 are today “sufficiently protected by vaccination or previous infection”. “Vaccination levels today are “not enough,” the Ministry of Health and Prevention indicated during a press conference.
And he added: “There are three weeks of mobilization left before Christmas, it is now that it is played.”
Source: BFM TV
