No, there were not only “40 patients in a week for 100,000 inhabitants” in France


HEALTH – Epidemiologist Laurent Toubiana said on Thursday that the incidence rate of Covid-19 would be “40 patients in one week per 100,000 inhabitants”. A figure taken out of context.

France would experience a “epidemic of tests” to use the phrase used by the “reassurance people”. Opposed to health restrictions, we find in the ranks of this sphere which minimizes the scale of the Covid-19 epidemic, Professor Laurent Toubiana. The one who, in the spring of 2020, assured that there would be no second wave of the epidemic, now says that there are very few patients.

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The Verifiers, a fact-checking team shared by the editorial staff of TF1, LCI and LCI.fr

Asked about Cnews this Thursday, December 23, the epidemiologist, known to have participated in the conspiracy documentary Hold Up, said that last week, France had registered only 40 patients per 100,000 inhabitants. A sequence cut by the channel, posted on social networks and gone viral. The post reached 250,000 views in less than 24 hours. But what is it really?

A single mesh of the net

During his intervention, the epidemiologist clarified that he was relying on figures from the Sentinels network. In its last weekly report published on Wednesday, this health watch network actually writes that in week 50 – that is, that going from December 13 to 19 – “25,509 new cases of COVID-19 consulted a general practitioner”. Which represents “39 cases per 100,000 inhabitants”. Data far removed from official indicators. According to the latest epidemiological bulletin from Public Health France, the incidence rate for the same week was 550 per 100,000 French people. A number thirteen times higher!

How to explain such a gap? The epidemiologist simply misinterpreted the epidemic figures. Those it broadcasts are not fundamentally wrong, but they only represent a tiny fraction of the sick. The network cited by Laurent Toubiana only reports cases observed during consultations in city medicine. The network site – where the professor found these data – also specifies in the preamble that their monitoring is based solely on “on the observation of patients with Acute respiratory infection, seen by a general practitioner or a pediatrician”.

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In fact, to carry out the monitoring of the epidemic, the health authorities record the data “from several sources”, as Public Health France explains. This area of ​​the network of the territory, represented in the pyramid below, makes it possible to follow the evolution of the virus in several areas. It is thus based on data from general practitioners in town (Sentinels), on those from home interventions (SOS Médecins), but also all those from laboratories, hospitals or nursing homes.

So how do we know, out of the 369,400 new cases recorded between December 13 and 19, how many were sick? Impossible to assess it with certainty. That said, a recent study observed that more than half (60%) of positive Covid-19 cases were symptomatic, and therefore sick. If we compare this estimate to the incidence rate recorded in France last week, this represents more than 320 patients per 100,000 inhabitants. This is eight times more than what Laurent Toubiana claims.

Do you want to ask us questions or provide us with information that you think is unreliable? Do not hesitate to write to us at [email protected]. Also find us on Twitter: @ verif_TF1LCI.

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