Will they be able to stay safe? When we look at the number of Covid-19 patients in relation to the population, certain metropolitan areas seem, for the moment, rather unaffected by the epidemic due to the new coronavirus. Nationally, 22,300 people have been infected since the start of the crisis and 1,100 have died in a hospital.
According to figures from Public Health France, the Pays de la Loire count "only" 343 people tested positive this Wednesday, March 25. Compared to the population, this gives a rate of less than 0.01%, which is the lowest for a metropolitan area. New Aquitaine, Occitania, Brittany, the Loire Valley Center, and Normandy follow, with rates not exceeding 0.017%. Far from the 0.09% reached in the Grand Est and the 0.055% in Ile-de-France.
"The wave is coming, we expect it"
But there are two things to note. On the one hand, these figures only take into account patients who have been screened and whose result is positive. The number of asymptomatic patients remains unknown. Furthermore, in these regions too, we observe that the daily number of cases is increasing day by day. In Pays de la Loire, for example, we reached 50 cases in 24 hours for the first time on Tuesday. In Center Val de Loire, for four days, this gives 35, 37, 70 then 89 new patients screened in 24 hours. Monday evening, there were in the department 38 patients in intensive care, against 10 three days earlier.
Does this mean that the epidemic “wave”, to use the term used by Emmanuel Macron in the JDD on March 22, will sweep away all regions? In any case, they are preparing for it and strengthening their hospital resources, in particular in intensive care. This Tuesday, the director of the Regional Health Authority (ARS) of Normandy said to expect the peak of new patients in "weekend" or "mid-next week". The region has 300 intensive care beds, and will be able to increase to more than 400. In the Loire Valley Center, the ARS prefers not to decide on the precise deadline but it ensures that Parisians have "the capacity to cope". Nouvelle-Aquitaine, "the wave is coming, we expect it", said on March 18 Professor Denis Malvy, head of the infectious and tropical diseases unit of the traveler at the Pellegrin Hospital in Bordeaux.
Nationwide, the number of patients doubled "every four days," said Health Director General Jérôme Salomon on March 19. And it is estimated that an infected person contaminates 2.5 on average.
Effects of containment not before early April
The more days pass, the more we can hope that the containment measures that came into effect on March 17 will limit the exponential growth in the number of patients. However, these effects "can only be observed from a period of two to three weeks from the implementation" of containment, warn the members of the Scientific Council in their opinion dated March 23 . This postpones the deadline to early April, at the earliest.
Some of the people who will test positive in the coming days may have been infected since confinement. Because, even without symptoms during the incubation period which can last up to two weeks, an infected individual is contagious. "The more we respect confinement, the more quickly a slowdown in the spread of the virus will be observed," insists Sibylle Bernard-Stoecklin, member of the directorate of infectious diseases at Public Health France.
The situation worries the overseas territories even more. If the number of cases reported to the population there is even lower than in the less affected metropolitan areas, the dilapidation of their health system makes the local authorities fear the worst in the event of a mass arrival of patients in hospitals.
