Three and a half weeks after its entry into force, confinement is found in the dock.
Many Internet users question its effectiveness, relying on an excerpt from the 24 heures Pujadas program on LCI broadcast a few days ago.
Curves of the epidemic in support, a journalist indicates that the containment "has surely played a role" but that the three-day period between its entry into force and the peak in the number of new cases of Covid-19 "is too much short so that [the] drop is directly linked to containment ”.
As for the curfew, its impact would be limited to the extent that the epidemic would also have slowed down in metropolitan areas that were not subject to it.
Uplifting video.
From the start, the effectiveness of containment has not been based on any scientific certainty!
It is high time to put an end to it and thus prevent the bankruptcy of thousands of businesses, restaurants, hotels, etc.
⬇️ pic.twitter.com/8GOtpM8fDd
- Marion Maréchal (@MarionMarechal) November 19, 2020
“From the start, the effectiveness of containment has not been based on any scientific certainty!
", Pinged on Twitter the former member of the National Rally Marion Maréchal, granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, eliciting more than a thousand shares and many reactions.
"Are we in the process of accepting unnecessary confinement?
“, Wondered in turn this Monday morning the writer Alexandre Jardin, while doctors and authorities believe that it takes at least one or two weeks before measuring the effects of a measure taken.
Curfews before confinement
Let's go back to the facts.
The confinement of the whole country was announced by Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday October 28 and then entered into force two days later, Friday October 30.
As for the incidence rate, corresponding to the number of new cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the past week, it reached a peak on November 2, at 499.6, or three days later.
Note, however, that the counter of new cases and the incidence rate do not yet take into account the positive cases by antigen test, which have been ramping up since the end of October.
The week of November 9 to 15, they already represented 10% of those by RT-PCR tests.
This makes Mahmoud Zureik, professor of public health and epidemiology at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, say that "the date of the peak was undoubtedly a little later".
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In addition, the peak in the number of patients in critical care (resuscitation, intensive care, surveillance) was reached on November 16, or 18 days after the start of confinement.
Last spring, the gap was 22 days, just a little more.
Above all, taking into account that confinement would ignore all the measures taken previously, and in particular the curfew at 9 p.m.
As of October 17, this came into force in Île-de-France and in eight major cities.
A week later, 54 departments were this time concerned.
Not to mention all the measures taken since the end of summer in areas on maximum alert, such as the closure of bars and restaurants after a certain time.
In addition, the school holidays for All Saints' Day, which started on October 17, may also have made it possible to limit social interactions and therefore contamination.
"A much stronger impact than what was decided upstream"
Recognizing having had a "good surprise" seeing the peak arrive so quickly after the start of confinement, epidemiologist Pascal Crepey judges that "people may have a tendency to think that, if we set up a confinement, only that - this can work ”.
“The curfew and all the measures that have been taken before are so many measures that have made it possible to attenuate the dynamics of the epidemic, even to stabilize it.
But once you've reached the plateau, you also have to go down.
For this, confinement has a much stronger impact than what has been decided upstream, ”he adds.
The incidence rate has also decreased at a lightning speed since the beginning of November, even if - as we have already mentioned - it will be necessary to add the positive cases by antigen test.
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In its last weekly epidemiological update, from Thursday, November 19, Public Health France notes that "the temporality between the implementation [of the various provisions], in particular that of the first curfew, and the reversal of the trend for ten days later, is in favor of a direct effect of the measures ”.
The agency also stresses that it is "not possible to measure the impact of the All Saints holidays".
"Staggering effect"
That said, and as mentioned in the extract from LCI, it is not only in Île-de-France and in the eight cities affected by a curfew from October 17 that the situation quickly deteriorated. improved.
In Bordeaux, Nice and Strasbourg, for example, the incidence rate peaked at the very beginning of November, before starting to decline continuously.
On this point, Public Health considers "reasonable to consider that the announcement of flagship measures in the first metropolises had an impact beyond these by resonance effect, leading to a change in behavior in a wider scope than that targeted ”.
And to add that "this period was also marked by a communication on the gravity of the situation which could contribute to this phenomenon".
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Vincent Maréchal also believes in this "effect of astonishment", in his words.
“In October, it was announced that the situation would be dramatic if nothing happened, and people paid much more attention,” says this virologist at Sorbonne University.
Moreover, the latest data from the CoviPrev survey from Public Health France show that compliance with all barrier gestures (hand washing, physical distancing, avoiding going to visit vulnerable people, etc.) has returned to the increase from the middle of October.
Future studies
But we can still wonder if the epidemic would not have slowed down even without containment, once the peak reached in early November.
"I cannot answer this question but I think that as long as the bars and restaurants were partly open and as long as the curfew was not well followed everywhere, it might not have been enough", Judge Mahmoud Zureik.
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VIDEO. Coronavirus: "The vaccine alone will not end the pandemic", warns WHO
"The impact of containment cannot be assessed because of too short a timeframe since it was put in place," said Public Health France on November 19.
The health agency will of course look into the subject in the coming days and weeks, as well as other organizations.
"For that, we expect to have enough perspective to be able to analyze the various indicators in the most relevant way possible, because there can be strong variations linked to many elements", indicates Pascal Crepey.
Last spring, the researcher from the Rennes School of Public Health Studies (EHESP) had already tried to assess the number of deaths that the first confinement would have prevented.
Some doctors also put forward the hypothesis of a "natural" dynamic of the virus, which would be less virulent at a given time.
A track swept away by experts.
"We had already released this hypothesis during the first wave, we have since seen that nothing allowed to establish it", points Pascal Crepey.
And his colleague Mahmoud Zureik concludes: “Natural evolution, with regard to a virus that we did not know less than a year ago, I do not know what it is.
"
