"Chiuso". On the gates of Italian schools, but also on the fronts of bars, restaurants, clothing stores and hairdressing salons, the same word appears in capital letters: closed. Since the 60 million Italians were put under bell because of the coronavirus, France wonders: are these extreme containment measures really effective?
While the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron announced this Thursday, March 12 the closure of schools, from Monday, and until further notice, the head of the emergency department of the Pompidou hospital in Paris believes that this measure has already shown its effectiveness. "Many studies around the world have shown that closing schools can reduce the winter flu epidemic," said Professor Philippe Juvin. This breaks the chains of contamination, as children are vectors of the virus and find it difficult to adopt barrier gestures such as washing their hands or wearing a mask. Now, we will have to manage these school closings and know how we organize ourselves ”.
The head of the Pompidou hospital emergency department wonders in particular about the organization of his own service. "If all the schools are closed and the parents have to keep their children at home, I wonder how many nurses and doctors I will have left in my service," underlines Philippe Juvin.
"The more extreme the measures, the more effective it is"
By adopting until now a strategy of progressive containment, only in certain areas of the territory, France was different from Italy, but it has just suddenly taken a notch above in restrictive measures.
"We must realize that the coronavirus should affect about 15% of the French population, or more than ten million inhabitants, said Jean-Stéphane Dhersin, specialist in epidemic modeling at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) . The objective of the State is to slow down the progress of the epidemic as much as possible, to spread it over time and to avoid blocking the hospitals ”.
More and more therefore, the Italian scenario seems to be gaining France. "Italy has itself only applied what China has already done and we see that the epidemic in this country is in its downward phase", underlines Professor Philippe Juvin. "Closing schools, sports halls, theaters ... yes, that's good, because by cutting off contacts between people, you are effectively cutting the chains of transmission of the virus," added the doctor.
"The more extreme the containment measures taken, the more effective they are," says Jean-Stéphane Dhersin. In fact, if the entire population were asked to stay at home in a fortnight or three weeks, the coronavirus epidemic would be over. "
"Deleterious collateral effects"
But the deputy director of the National Institute of Mathematical Sciences and their interactions adds that blocking residents at home would have a huge economic and health impact. Because some people would risk dying at home, other diseases than the coronavirus, lack of care.
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"This is the whole problem of general containment," admits Philippe Juvin. This creates a disorganization of society such that it can cause deleterious collateral effects. "