France heading straight for new confinement in early 2022 ? Or will the current outbreak of Covid-19 calm down without more restrictions? Impossible to answer, as the uncertainties remain vast around the Omicron variant. During his vows on Friday evening, Emmanuel Macron warned once morest the next “difficult” weeks but also wished to display his optimism: “2022, perhaps, will be the year of the end of the epidemic. (.. .) The year we can see the outcome “.
The Omicron variant has supplanted Delta, and has become the majority in France in recent days, with “62.4% of the tests screened” showing a profile compatible with this variant at the beginning of the last week of the year, found Public Health France in its latest weekly survey. “It is not possible to precisely quantify the impact that the Omicron wave will have on the health system”, previously summarized the Institut Pasteur, in models taking the new variant into account for the first time. A reality, for the time being, is indisputable. The cases are soaring to a level never seen in France, where they exceed 200,000 in 24 hours, as in other neighboring countries. Admittedly, this explosion is partly linked to a record number of screening tests, but that does not explain everything: the epidemic resumption has been a reality since the fall and was accentuated at the end of the year.
But if this “tidal wave” is indisputable and “makes you dizzy” – to use the terms used Wednesday by the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran -, we still do not know whether it announces a new dramatic health crisis, accompanied a return of drastic restrictions such as a curfew or confinement. The crucial factor is to what extent the flight of contaminations will result in serious, potentially fatal forms. In other words, how far will hospitalizations linked to Covid go? This is the question posed by the Institut Pasteur, whose models largely serve as a guide for the Scientific Council which, in turn, closely advises the government.
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He didn’t really answer it. If it is so difficult to make predictions, it is because of the new Omicron variant and its dual nature. On the one hand, it circulates much faster and has become dominant in France, following other countries such as the United Kingdom. If the fall wave was originally due to another variant, Delta, it was certainly Omicron who revived it. On the other hand, Omicron appears to cause fewer severe forms than other avatars of the virus like Delta, which dominated the world before it arrived. Faced with these two contrary factors – greater contagiousness and probable less severity – forecasts are shifting with only one constant: a peak in hospitalizations will be reached at the end of January.
Eyes on the UK
In the worst case scenario of the Pasteur Institute, this peak would exceed 15,000 daily admissions, an astronomical level and well beyond the records observed at the start of the pandemic in France in spring 2020. But this scenario, which supposes both that Omicron is extremely contagious, and as severe as Delta, is highly unlikely. Conversely, by being particularly optimistic regarding the benign nature of Omicron, the Institute envisages a peak of just over 1,000 hospitalizations per day, which would hardly differ from the current level, which is admittedly already heavy to manage for French hospitals.
But, between these two extremes, the forecasts are very broad, especially as they depend on other factors, including the pace of the current booster vaccination campaign, or the respect by the French of barrier gestures such as wearing of the mask. Another difficulty is that the number of hospitalizations is itself insufficient to gauge the severity of the crisis: if, with Omicron, they last shorter and lead to fewer resuscitations, the impact will be less severe for the hospital for the same amount. . “We are awaiting more complete data on the characteristics of severity, transmissibility and immune escape of the Omicron variant”, “which notably includes its resistance to existing vaccines” admits the Pasteur Institute. “New data should be available over the next 7-14 days and will help narrow the range of possible scenarios.”
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For the time being, the government and researchers are fixing their gaze on one country: the United Kingdom, where Omicron has spread much earlier than in France. According to the latest news, Covid hospitalizations there have increased by half in a week, a rather contained increase. We “might have expected, with the number of positive cases recorded (…) a much greater increase in hospitalizations”, Olivier Véran remarked in front of deputies, admitting nevertheless that this increase was “not neutral for hospitals that are already tired “.
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