The president of the Scientific Council, Jean-François Delfraissy, recalled this Friday that if the virus circulated less in the country, it was necessary to get used to living with it and to prepare for the emergence of a new variant.
All the indicators now seem to be green, with a decrease in the circulation of Covid-19 and hospitalizations. However, if the epidemic is “controlled”, she is not “not finished”, warn scientists. Last week, “the slowdown in the Sars-CoV-2 epidemic has been confirmed throughout the territory, with a decrease in incidence rates (-39%) and positivity rates (-5 points)”, summarizes the French public health agency in its weekly update published at the end of the week.
If these indicators remain at a high level, the ebb is no longer in doubt: the daily average of new contaminations over seven days, which smoothes the variations, stood at 43,865 on Thursday, against 80,980 the previous Thursday. A drop which is also confirmed in the hospital, since 21,880 Covid patients were hospitalized on Thursday, against 24,130 a week earlier.
“Political Decisions”
This health situation in “very clear improvement will give rise to adaptations in the coming weeks” measures in force, underlined the Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, Wednesday during the Council of Ministers. Most of the restrictions were lifted in mid-March on the territory, but some measures are still in force, such as wearing a mask in public transport, the health pass required in health establishments, or even compulsory isolation after a positive test for Covid-19.
“At the end of May-beginning of June, there will probably be political decisions”, declared this Friday on France Info Jean-François Delfraissy, the president of the Scientific Council, which advises the government. “We are coming out of this fifth wave, which has been a little longer than expected” and we can be “reasonably optimistic for France and Europe for the coming months, with probably a spring which is likely to turn out well,” he judged. By the end of May, he predicts a drop in contamination of around 5,000 to 10,000 cases per day.
But, he recalled, the situation was the same a year ago, before the delta variant arrived in France in June, which reshuffled the cards. “The epidemic is under control but we all know it is not over”, warned Delfraissy. We can indeed expect “on the appearance of a new variant: it is estimated rather at the start of the school year but perhaps it will arrive before”. And the whole question will then be to know what will be its contagiousness, its severity and its resistance to vaccines.
“Very high transmissibility of delta, then of omicron”
Two sub-variants of Omicron (BA.4 and BA.5) currently seem to be the cause of a new epidemic peak in South Africa, which is entering the winter period. It is still too early to know precisely their virulence, but if we are to believe initial data, vaccines continue to offer good protection against severe forms of Covid and reduce the risk of death.
He is “very difficult today to give specific indicators” to determine when the pandemic will end, she added. What Europe and France have now managed to get rid of in pandemic management thanks to vaccination are confinements and curfews.
However, due to “the very high transmissibility of delta, then of omicron, the absolute number of deaths has continued to follow a very high rate which has not decreased much since the start of the pandemic”, recalls epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva. It is so “very premature” to judge that the pandemic can be over.