Before new announcements, a review of the health situation.
This Thursday, during a press briefing, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran stressed that the curfew in place remained insufficient to reduce the Covid-19 epidemic in France, and that hospital tension tended to increase, while new variants are causing concern to health authorities.
"The virus circulates at a high level, it diffuses, and it diffuses faster every week", noted the Minister of Health, affirming that, in terms of figures, France remained "on a rising plateau", with a 10% increase in contamination cases each week.
The minister noted a "real effect" of the curfew on the spread of the virus, especially in the east of the country where it was put in place in early January.
But "the epidemic dynamic has gradually become balanced".
Conclusion: the curfew "has an effectiveness", "it probably made it possible not to experience the same epidemic wave as our neighbors", but its effect "is fading", explained the Minister.
Variants: a risk of "epidemic within the epidemic"
The effect was particularly felt in the hospital.
"Hospital tension is increasing again," said Olivier Véran, stressing that some hospitals were not able to reprogram care deprogrammed during the second epidemic wave.
This week, the threshold of 3,000 patients in intensive care was crossed, a figure that had not been reached since the end of the second peak of the epidemic in early December.
After reaching a plateau at the start of the year, the number of hospitalized patients also continues to increase, recently exceeding 27,000 patients.
The presence of more contagious variants (sequenced in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil) on the territory is also worrying.
As of January 8, the variant sequenced in Britain represented 3.2% of positive cases, said Gabriel Attal on Wednesday, adding that he had estimates "on the fact that this variant would circulate today in 10% of case ”.
Today, more than 2,000 cases infected with these variants are detected every day, confirmed Olivier Véran.
A probable re-containment
"The curfew and all the control measures are certainly useful, but probably not sufficient", insisted the minister, who says he wants to avoid "an epidemic within the epidemic", comparing these variants to "a new virus" .
These variants do not call into question the current vaccination campaign, since the vaccines remain effective against them, according to their manufacturers, he recalled.
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With such findings, it's hard not to imagine the arrival of new restrictions, or even re-containment, in the days to come.
The objective of this short speech was to "grasp the issues of the moment with its certainties and uncertainties" in order to justify the decisions to be taken in the coming days, explained the Minister of Health.
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