The government speaking out every Thursday evening has become a ritual during which everyone expects new announcements of restrictions.
But this Thursday, it was a respite.
No new turn of the screw before knowing the first effects of the containment put in place a week ago.
If in the morning, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor (PS) of Paris, announced that "some" businesses such as drinking establishments or grocery stores should close at 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., this measure is not generalized in the Hexagon and well circumscribed to establishments where "gatherings" are possible.
However, the situation remains serious in terms of health.
"The wave is there and it is violent," said Olivier Véran, the Minister of Health, after the statement of figures by the Director General of Health: France has the largest number of cases in Europe, more than 20 % of screenings performed are positive, the R0 which says how much an infected person will infect others is always too high, at 1.3 when it should be below 1.
Patient transfers
If all of France is affected, the Rhône-Alpes region, around the metropolitan areas of Saint-Etienne, Lyon and Grenoble, is particularly affected.
"As a resuscitator, I have never seen so many deaths in my life," confided to our colleagues from Progress, the head of intensive care at Croix-Rousse in Lyon.
Already, more than 40 patients have been transferred to the rare territories still able to accommodate them such as New Aquitaine, Pays de la Loire and Brittany.
Without the confinement, assured the minister, the critical care services in the region would have been totally saturated (with twice as many patients than their maximum capacity) in mid-November.
And everywhere else?
If it is too early to measure its effectiveness, Olivier Véran still indicated that the situation, without restriction, would have been "catastrophic, with more than 9,000 Covid patients in intensive care", still in mid-November.
"I believe that confinement is respected"
To the hardening of the confinement requested by doctors and politicians, Olivier Véran preferred this Thursday a last attempt at collective accountability: "The duration of the rules depends on us, the more rigorous we are, the less the confinement will be long", he added. he said without excluding new measures.
"I believe that confinement is respected by the French", he even advanced.
“Of course, it is confinement that leaves more flexibility, but we see much less gatherings of young adults, which were real factors of propagation, explains the professor of infectious diseases Anne-Claude Crémieux.
Will this be enough?
I do not exclude it!
But it will take several weeks.
"
