Omicron variant: “We are no longer in the same epidemic”, assures Martin Blachier

“The percentage of French people who will have the Omicron variant at any given time will be much greater than with the previous variants”, estimated the epidemiologist Martin Blachier on LCI (see video above). “First of all because it is very contagious and it walks very well in the vaccinated population”, he developed, “and in addition because there are few barrier gestures, everything is open”.

However, the public health doctor has confirmed that the Omicron variant is less dangerous than its predecessors, as a very recent British study seems to attest, which estimates that a patient with this variant has a 70% less chance of being hospitalized. , that a patient infected by the Delta. Martin Blachier even believes that the very serious forms of the disease should be divided by ten, if we rely on data from South Africa, the first country where Omicron had been identified. According to him, the British or Danish curves follow the same path as the South Africans.

Martin Blachier tempers, for the same reasons, the fear that the low proportion of serious cases, but in a very large infected population, could still saturate hospitals. “On resuscitation, it’s more on the side of the good news than the bad”, he explains: “the wave will be meteoric, but will not last very long, it is already running out of steam in Denmark, and with an impact on resuscitations not that high”.

For the doctor, we are witnessing “a wave of a new generation, which can be transmitted in people vaccinated or already immunized, but which by definition will create less serious cases since it is a second passage”. “We are no longer in the same epidemic”, he hammers in front of Darius Rochebin.

Martin Blachier also warned against the “contact case” policy, which, with a very large number of contaminations, could paralyze the country. According to him, this one is not adapted to the “Omicron wave “. “Should we still follow this strategy? “, he asked himself, while, he continues, the symptoms of sick people are quite mild and comparable to those of a “small sore throat”.