In our Covid-19 departments: the circulation of the virus has slowed down, but the hospital is not really blowing yet


A month after the peak of contamination in the region, the Omicron wave is indeed in very marked decline. The Minister of Health even spoke this Sunday of collapse. But less than a week after a further easing of health restrictions with, in particular, the reopening of nightclubs and the return of standing concerts, there is no question for Olivier Veran of further accelerating the lifting of all the braking measures for the Covid-19 epidemic.

If for the schoolchildren of zone B the return to school took place this Monday with a reduction in the health protocol, the minister gives, for the rest, an appointment in mid-March, because there is still ” too many patients in hospitals to say it’s over. It is at this deadline that the lifting of the other restrictions is planned. “The hospital and epidemic conditions will allow us to remove the mask inside and to remove all or part of the vaccine pass where it is still in force today” estimated Olivier Veran when he was the guest of the Grand RTL-Le Figaro-LCI Jury.

Plummeting incidence rates

The decline in the circulation of the virus is not happening at the same speed everywhere in France. The movement, first initiated in Paris and Ile-de-France, is now well established in our region. In our departments, only Jura and Haute-Loire show a rate higher than the national rate. The Ain and the Loire, and even more the Rhône, are well below them. The fact remains that the decline is more marked everywhere. When the incidence rate is down 42% in France over the past week, it drops by 45% in the Jura, 50% in the Rhône and Haute-Loire and even 51% in the Loire and Ain .

We are still very far from the famous alert threshold of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants – which moreover no longer makes too much sense with mass vaccination and since Omicron reputed to be both much more transmissible and less severe -, both the Contaminations reached stratospheric levels in January. However, we have fallen back to a level of incidence just before Christmas for the Rhône, the Loire and the Ain, at the end of December for the Haute-Loire and at the very beginning of January for the Jura.

Contrasting situation in the hospital

The marked and lasting drop in contamination is not reflected everywhere by hospitals emptying themselves of Covid + patients. The trend is marked in the Rhône, the sixth department with the most Covid-19 positive patients treated in traditional care but which saw the number of hospitalizations drop by 15% in one week (-155 patients). Same observation in the Loire where the drop is 17% and in the Haute-Loire (-15.7%). On the other hand, we observe a certain stability in the hospitals of Ain (+1 patient) and Jura (-1 patient).

The situation is also mixed in critical care, even if the general trend is towards some improvement. At the level of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the tension on resuscitation is loosening. It was 56% on February 20, down more than 20% in one week. The respite is more moderate in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté with tension at more than 61%, down only 6.95% in one week.

It is in the Rhône, the fifth department receiving the most patients affected by Covid-19 in critical care, that the decrease is the most marked. With 46 fewer patients in intensive care units, the Lyon region has recorded a 30% drop in the last seven days. This allows it to return to similar conditions in mid-December, when the Omicron variant began to sweep the country.

As of February 20, there are four fewer patients in critical care in the Loire, one less in Ain, while in the Jura and Haute-Loire there is an increase of two and three additional patients respectively. A slight increase in absolute value but huge in percentage since by going from two to five patients, Haute-Loire recorded a 150% increase in patients in critical care in one week.

More than 100 deaths in a week

Despite the lesser severity of the Omicron variant, the large number of Covid-19 cases has mechanically increased mortality. In the past seven days, 104 people have died of Covid-19 in hospital in our departments. The Rhône, the 4th most bereaved department in France since the start of the pandemic, alone accounts for nearly 60% of these deaths. The Loire has 24 dead, Ain 9, Jura 6 and Haute-Loire 4.

If this macabre count seems to want to slow down a little compared to January, this is not the case in all departments. Thus, in Ain, there are already eleven more deaths in the first three weeks of February than in the whole of January, which however alone totaled 5.6% of the deaths recorded in the department since start of the pandemic. With 22 dead in February, the Jura is already very close to its total for the previous month (24). As for the Loire, if mortality does not slow down over the coming week, the monthly toll will also exceed that of January.

Vaccination: it’s starting to level off

Whereas since February 15, to maintain the validity of your vaccination pass, you must have performed a booster injection as early as 3 months after the end of your initial schedule and within a maximum of 4 months, the vaccination only progresses slowly. .

On the booster dose, it is increasing, all ages combined, from 1.2 to 1.3% in the five departments in one week. And in the oldest sections (over 65), to whom it was opened first, we now observe stagnation.

The implementation of the vaccination pass and the impossibility now of having recourse to a test to benefit from it in an ephemeral way, does not seem to have boosted the appointments of refractory or latecomers. Complete two-dose vaccination progressed by only 0.1% in one week in the five departments.

The planned lifting of the vaccination pass in mid-March should end up persuading those reluctant to the injection that it is urgent to wait.



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