Every day, about fifty people land on French soil from Brazil, where the epidemic situation turns into disaster under the explosion of local variants.
"A right"
, according to the Minister of Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari in the face of calls to suspend air links, which questions the possibility of seeing in France this worrying Brazilian mutation take precedence over the epidemic.
To discover
Test, isolation: the procedure to follow in the event of a suspicion of Covid-19
Covid-19: instructions for use of self-tests
Read also: Covid-19: mutants, variants or recombinants, what are the differences?
What is it about ?
The subject of concern is called P1, or rather variant 20J501Y.V3, and was first observed in mid-December in the city of Manaus, in the Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest.
This is characterized by mutations in the Spyke N501Y and E484K protein, like the British and South African strains, as well as K417T.
This impacts the contagion and resistance to immunity of this new variant.
A fear verified by the first studies.
According to the medical journal
MedRxiv
, the Brazilian variant can be up to 2.5 times more contagious than the original strain.
Its potential for reinfection, i.e. its ability to infect people infected in the past, is estimated to be between 25% and 61%.
Read also: Covid-19: the Brazilian variant suspected in the new disaster that hits the city of Manaus
Several indications also suggest that P1 affects patients much younger than the other variants.
The Brazilian Association of Intensive Care (AMIB) revealed on Sunday April 11 that more than half of the approximately 11,000 patients in intensive care in the country were under 50 years old.
An observation linked to the fact that young people expose themselves more and are less likely to be vaccinated, of course, but also to the increased mortality of the virus in this age group.
Mortality figures among those under 45 have increased by 193% since P1 has dominated the country, according to AMIB.
Is it resistant to different vaccines?
Few data are currently available to reaffirm the efficacy of vaccines on the P1 variant.
Only 10% of Brazilians have received a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the only one currently administered in the country.
A few studies are nevertheless reassuring.
According to scientists at the University of Oxford, the vaccines produce a stronger immune response than has been feared.
Its immune response is said to be similar to that of the British variant, and better than the South African one.
The AstraZeneca vaccine would be three times less effective on P1 than on the original strain, against nine times for the South African variant.
Read also: Covid-19: these three variants that scare the world
What's going on in Brazil?
With 4,000 new deaths a day linked to the coronavirus, the epidemic outbreak is out of control in Brazil.
Hospitals are overcrowded in most areas.
In the economic capital of the country São Paulo, buses reserved for school transport are mobilized to transport corpses.
This situation is due to the preponderance of the P1 variant in the country, but also to the management of the health crisis.
President Jair Bolsonaro still refuses to pronounce general confinement across the country, and strives to criticize the various measures taken locally, such as in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
The situation is all the more critical as Brazil is not fighting against a mutant, but dozens.
Faced with this intense circulation of the epidemic, the virus evolves very quickly, including the P1 variant itself.
"We are at 17 mutations so far, it is a lot and this is what can explain that it is so transmissible"
, details the neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis on Europe 1. Add to these his twin P2, a very similar variant detected in October in the region of Janeiro, and the formidable Belo Horizonte, a strain that contains no less than 18 combined mutations, from different Brazilian, South African and British variants.
Read also: In Brazil, the Covid-19 epidemic is out of control
In all, the Fiocruz Institute has currently identified 92 variants of the coronavirus in Brazil.
"
Brazil could thus turn into a laboratory of open-air variants which can compromise the fight against the pandemic throughout the world
"
,
fears Miguel Nicolelis.
The virus, by re-infecting people who have already had the disease, or who have received a single dose of vaccine, mutates to adapt to these new configurations: an uncontrolled variant can thus generate another.
A worrying epidemic scenario called "escape".
Should we fear a similar situation in France?
To date, the Brazilian variant represents less than 1% of contaminations in France, according to the latest epidemiological bulletin from Public Health France which qualified, on April 8, as
"stable"
the situation of South African and Brazilian variants in France. .
Thus, for example, only a hundred cases have been identified in a week in the Occitanie region, according to Jacques Izopet, head of the biology pole and head of the virology department of the Toulouse University Hospital, who told the
Dépêche du Midi
:
"For the 'moment, there is no particular concern, but it is necessary to watch ”.
Read also: France is obliged to keep airlines with Brazil, explains Djebbari
The Brazilian variant is not in the majority in France, because in the absence of massive arrivals of patients, "
it disappears in the face of the British variant,
"
Bruno Lina
,
member of the Scientific Council
,
explains to
Parisian
.
It has a transmissibility only 20 to 30% higher than the original virus, against 60% for the British.
"
P1 has nevertheless created important clusters beyond the Brazilian borders.
In the province of British Columbia, Canada, nearly 900 people have been infected with this variant after a cluster exploded in the Whistler ski resort.
There, none of the patients, often young, nevertheless returned from Latin America.
"If it arrives on European and French soil, it will be able to experience rapid growth
,
"
says Professor Rémi Salomon, who calls for limiting the movement of travelers from Brazil and for the imposition of a strict quarantine.
