Covid-19: why a third confinement is possible

Mauricette, 78, was vaccinated.

This resident of the long-term care unit at Renée-Muret hospital in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis) is the very first person to have, in France, received an injection of the anti-Covid vaccine.

A symbol and a real hope to succeed in destroying this virus which has poisoned our lives for a year.

This Sunday should be a milestone but it will take a lot of patience before seeing the effects of this campaign which is just beginning.

While some indicators are turning red, concerns are growing and a possible new confinement can no longer be ruled out.

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Before Christmas, members of the government and the majority are prohibited from discussing the possibility of re-containment.

The language elements had to be reassuring and especially not to spoil the party and the New Year's Eve of the French.

The idea is no longer excluded.

The Minister of Health Olivier Véran mentioned it himself in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche.

"If the epidemic situation were to worsen", he qualifies all the same.

One way to prepare the spirits because the situation is not, far from it, radiant on the front of the fight against the coronavirus.

With 15,000 contaminations detected per day on average, while we had fallen to 11,000 in mid-December, the target of 5,000 in the sights of the health authorities is, for the moment, out of reach.

Some local elected officials, including the mayor of Reims, have been pleading for several days for a return to confinement, regional or national.

The return of the cold

The weather effect also tilts in a balance of worries that is increasing day by day.

Low temperatures are an additional factor that promotes the circulation of the virus because they encourage us to take refuge in enclosed and therefore less ventilated places.

"Several studies carried out in recent months show that, on average, an increase in temperature of 1 ° C leads to a 3.1% drop in the number of coronavirus cases", explains meteorologist Guillaume Séchet.

And there, the humidity, the snow, the cold are there.

Winter promises to be a little harsher in the coming days with, according to Météo France forecasts for the period from January 4 to 10, "temperatures below normal for the season and a succession of rainy periods and showers accompanied by snow in the mountains down to low altitude, even in the plains in the North-East ”.

The already complicated health situation in the Bourgogne Franche-Comté and Grand-Est regions could therefore worsen further.

Christmas without curfew and without travel restrictions

The government wanted to allow the French to meet up with their families for Christmas Eve.

A tolerance which follows "a choice of strict and difficult measures earlier to let the French breathe during the holidays", defends Olivier Véran in the JDD.

“It worked”, continues the Minister of Health, but “not enough” since more than 40,000 new cases of Covid were recorded in 48 hours from Thursday to Friday.

The strike of the lifting of the curfew on the evening of December 24 should be known soon and the Minister of Health advises not to celebrate the New Year: "We cannot, for one evening, take the risk of blocking again the country for weeks.

"The virus is that of travelers, it likes when you move to infect others ...

Vaccination in countless steps

If it is indeed launched, the vaccination campaign will only gain momentum very gradually and its effects will not be felt for several weeks.

According to specialists, we should not count before a real effect on the epidemic when nearly 40% of French people have been bitten.

The rhythm of the injections depends directly on the deliveries of doses, from the Pfizer laboratory initially, from which the government secured the purchase of vaccines to immunize 5.5 million people.

By mid-February, only 1 million French people - seniors in nursing homes and nursing staff suffering from comorbidity - should be able, according to the authorities' objective, to receive the two injections (the first and then a second three weeks later) .

There, it can only have a positive effect on the decrease in fatal cases for these people at risk but not for the entire population.

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The time for general public vaccination will only intervene "in the spring or summer of 2021" according to the minister.

If France must be able to vaccinate 27 million citizens by this deadline, the delivery of vaccines from other laboratories, including those of AstraZeneca (for 13 million vaccinations), which announced this Sunday to have "found the formula winner ”, is still suspended from the production and delivery capacities of the British company.

Added to this is the skepticism of the French vis-à-vis a vaccine that many consider, despite reassuring statements from the scientific community, too quickly manufactured and with poorly known adverse effects.

Beyond antivaccines, which are powerful in particular on social networks, mistrust in the country of Pasteur is one of the highest in Europe.

It will have to be defeated for the campaign to bear fruit to beat the virus.

Caregivers at their wit's end

“We can't take this epidemic any longer, we're exhausted.

This cry from the heart of a geriatrician in a hospital in the Ile-de-France region sums up the state of mind of a large number of caregivers.

On the bridge for more than a year, will health workers still have the resources and the means to attack the virus again with as much energy in 2021 as the year which is ending?

The pressure on the health system remains high, with 1,500 hospitalizations per day, "a tension which decreases very little in intensive care," said the minister.

"We are on a plateau, it is no longer decreasing and we still have 50% of resuscitation beds occupied by Covid patients and this for several weeks, observes Aurélien Rousseau, Director General of the Regional Health Agency (ARS) Ile -of France.

There is a very strong tension but we do not notice a rise.

We are hyperattentive, this virus teaches us modesty, vigilance and concentration.

"