The summer holidays have started, and Eric Caumes deems the controls at airports too "lax", even though coronavirus is a traveler's disease. Result: we risk facing many imported cases, according to the boss of infectious diseases at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital.
Safi in Morocco, Catalonia, Lisbon, Leicester… Do these local reconfigurations sound like a warning?
ERIC CAUMES . Yes, absolutely. The less rigorous we are, the greater the risk of seeing the epidemic re-emerge. It's not over, other countries will have to set up local containments. In France, we are very lax. We treat the virus with contempt, we will be caught. Look, I'm just back from Austria. There, they had very few deaths from the Covid-19, and yet, during my flight, my coordinates were taken to warn me if, in retrospect, I was in contact with a suspicious person. It's called "tracing". Back in France, the only thing I was asked at the airport was if I had symptoms. Not a phone number, nothing!
How to explain it?
In France, there is no longer this culture of public health. It has been gradually lost over the past fifteen years, in particular because of the disappearance of prevention. I say, we no longer know how to do it well! For Covid-19, there is no treatment, no vaccine and this disease can give serious forms. Where are the 700,000 tests per week that we were promised? We don't even make a third of it. We cannot afford this relaxation. And what about the election night of the second round? If I judge by what I saw on TV that evening, no barrier measures were respected, we saw hugs, hugs, hand shakes. Politicians do not set a good example: they see the straw in the neighbor's eye, not the beam in theirs.
However, with green indicators, the evolution of the epidemic is stable in France?
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Yes, that's good, we prove that we manage to spot the clusters. But all of them? I do not know. Also, let's not forget that there are 20% asymptomatic and 50% with very few symptoms. Three of my colleagues called me to tell me that there were cases of Covid-19 among the nursing staff of their hospital and yet the team was not tested! They are told, you have masks, stand at a distance and the problem is solved. However, we know that 25% of the clusters are identified in health establishments. Wait, this is delirium. Why don't we do like the Germans who do massively screen?
Do you think, like other doctors, that a resumption of the epidemic in the fall is likely?
That's what I thought at the start. But I wonder if it will not arrive sooner than expected. I fear a second wave this summer. We are all worried. In America, in Guyana, the epidemic is soaring at 35 degrees. Being outside in the summer reduces the circulation of the virus a little, but not to a great extent. At La Pitié-Salpêtrière, my Covid unit is full, I had to open another one at the start of last week. Cases continue to happen. Three were hospitalized this weekend. So certainly, we see far fewer cases than during the epidemic but their number goes up a little. We never stopped seeing sick people.
Should the borders be reopened before the holidays?
It depends on whether we do it intelligently or not. I'm not against it, but we have to control it better: do tests, make contacts with travelers. And for those returning from a country where the epidemic is soaring, it is necessary to establish a quarantine. New Zealand does, we don't. Result, a week ago, about twenty binationals, returning from Algeria, were hospitalized on their arrival: more than 6 in Paris, 5 in Lyon, 5 in Marseille, 3 in Grenoble, 1 in Reims. One died. Have their entourage, the people they met at the airport, on the plane been detected and isolated? I'm not sure of it. Potentially infected people will continue to board, come and go from countries where the number of cases is exploding. We veil our faces and we do not do the job well when we know it, the Covid-19 is a pathology of the traveler.
