While France exceeded the threshold of 360,000 Covid-19 contaminations on Tuesday, a record since the start of the pandemic, the statistics would be much higher. At least that’s what the Minister of Health and Solidarity Olivier Véran said on Wednesday, calling into question the arrival of the Omicron variant, today the majority in France.
“With Omicron alone, when we make 370,000 diagnoses on a given day, we can consider that there is not far from a million in reality, perhaps a little less because we test a lot, of French people who contract it “, assures the minister on France Info, based on the advice of scientists. “Some say it’s probably over 500,000 a day”, he specifies.
Against this variant “at least three times more contagious”, “the traditional measures do not have any real impact”, declared the Minister of Health and Solidarity, who however relies on “the hypothesis” of a “decrease in the number of contaminations” in the coming days, as is the case in the UK. “If you follow the curves, you might expect a peak shape. But will it be a peak or a plateau? It takes a little longer to find out,” said Olivier Véran.
“The certainty is that Omicron is called to circulate and cross the planet. When the countries are going to deconfin, they will be crossed by Omicron”, he says. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted that more than half of Europeans could be affected by this variant within two months given the “tsunami” current.