© BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
Olivier Véran advanced on Franceinfo the hypothesis of a decrease in contamination.
The government “Follows the hypothesis of a decrease in the number of contaminations” in “the next days”, said the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, Wednesday morning at the microphone of Franceinfo. Is the epidemic peak linked to the Omicron variant really close? Simply reading the curves of the number of daily contaminations does not in any case allow us to conclude this, since it is still rising sharply, by nearly 60% in one week. A new record was thus broken on Tuesday, with 368,000 daily cases.
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But despite the meteoric rise in contamination with Omicron since the end of December, some elements point in the direction of an upcoming decline. First point, the number of contaminations is starting to drop in Great Britain, where the variant discovered in South Africa has taken precedence over Delta, a few days ahead of France. And the population profiles and vaccination coverage levels are close enough between the two countries to think that the evolution should be quite similar. Second point: the growth rate of cases seems to be declining for a few days in France, which might reflect a beginning of inflection.
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«I won’t be surprised if the peak arrives in a few days, recognize
Mahmoud Zureik, epidemiologist at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and director of the Epi-Phare scientific interest group. Impossible to say if it will be in 4 days or in a week, but with the extremely high number of contaminations at the moment, with more than 300,000 positive cases, but in reality more likely between 500,000 and 1 million every day, there is so much of French people who are going to be affected by Omicron that the progression cannot continue exponentially for very long.»
Very tense situation
And following? Will the decline be rapid, like what has been observed in England and South Africa, or will we experience a long high plateau like at the beginning of last year during the wave of the Alpha variant? “If the peak arrives, it is more because the epidemic lacks fuel, with a saturation of contaminations in the networks of contacts in the population, more than by any effect of the control measures., explains Mircea Sofonea, epidemiologist at the University of Montpellier. And in this case, there is no reason why the number of cases should not drop sharply following the peak, unless there was a too rapid release of barrier gestures and behaviors.»
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The imminent arrival of a peak in contamination would in any case be excellent news for the hospital situation, which is very tense today, with more than 23,000 patients hospitalized with the Covid, including more than 3,900 in critical care services. “Fortunately, Omicron causes fewer hospitalizations than Delta, and it also sends far fewer patients to intensive care, Mahmoud Zureik specifies. This is good news, because the pressure is already very strong on the hospital as a whole, with a significant number of Covid patients which are added to the delays in care and cases of influenza, all with very tired staff. The next few weeks are going to be difficult. ”
