The Walloon Minister of Health, Christie Morreale, was the guest of the editorial staff of BEL RTL this morning. She mentioned the rise in coronavirus contamination. We are approaching the bar of 100 beds occupied in intensive care due to Covid 19 contamination. We were down to 50. Should we be worried?
Christie Morreale: There are a lot of contaminations circulating. You surely have people around you who are contaminated with this BA5 variant. It circulates a lot. There are regarding 8,000 people who are diagnosed positive for Covid every day. It means that it circulates. If you are fragile, you protect yourself, you wear a mask, you may avoid closed places where there are a lot of people. In any case, you protect yourself. But when we observe France, we also estimate that the peak should be reached and that we are still not confronted, thanks to vaccination, and thanks to the fact that this variant is less virulent and more contagious, we remain in a situation which is hopefully manageable. We think that next week we will have reached the peak of hospitalizations.
Fabrice Grosfilley: Are you rather reassuring this morning?
Christie Morreale: I think we will avoid more restrictive measures.
Fabrice Grosfilley: This BA51 is a sub-variant of Omicron. It is very contagious and dangerous, mainly for people at risk. Does this mean that we must consider vaccination for fragile people who have not yet done their booster?
Christie Morreale: It is clear that the booster and the 3 doses of vaccination are important because they provide protection. You can’t avoid being infected. It is clear that there is a strong transmissibility.
Fabrice Grosfilley: There are many people who doubt the usefulness of the vaccination and the booster, saying that it did not prevent them from being contaminated?
Christie Morreale: This allows me to be able to remember that vaccination saves lives and allows many to have a normal life. In the sense that hospitalizations are reduced. So it is very effective once morest severe forms and deaths. On the other hand, once morest the forms of omicron, it is not very effective in terms of contamination. The virus continues to circulate, but we avoid severe forms and deaths, hence the importance of having our 3 doses of vaccinations and then above all of preparing for the start of the school year since that is when we think that ‘we must be vaccinated in the fall with a booster dose to prevent the winter from being complicated. It is really at this time that we will have to think regarding the abseiling rather than the summer when we can circulate freely. We must live a summer as normal as possible and know how to prepare for the fall, when we will start vaccination.
The Walloon Minister of Health has detailed that in autumn, vaccination will resume for the over 50s, nursing homes and the oldest people. Twenty centers will be opened in Wallonia. Some pharmacies will also be able to dispense the vaccine, as well as general practitioners. The federal government wants to facilitate access to vaccination.
