The days go by and the false rising dish on which the Covid-19 epidemic has started continues to darken the outlook.
While France is slowly heating up, the European neighbors are burning with great flames, fanned by the English variant.
What reinforce the concern of forecasters of the health crisis.
“The equation is simple: if people move less, they meet fewer people, so they contaminate themselves less,” explains epidemiologist Catherine Hill.
Containment as early and as strongly as possible, massively testing and isolating those who are positive.
"
Despite these warning signals, widely emitted by the scientific community, France is not locked away.
Not yet.
It may be a matter of days, but the authorities, while preparing the spirits, are doing their utmost to avoid a great leap to the depths, in terms of the morale of the French, as in the economic field, with a cost. estimated this fall at 15 billion euros per month in direct state aid alone.
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“Everything is done to avoid re-containment.
The objective of consistency is to leave the fifteen days of curfew effects and to apprehend all the epidemic data and the variants to take, if necessary, the decisions ”, one indicated this Monday evening to the Elysee.
More than ever, all eyes are on the indicators.
The data from this start of the week should make it possible to definitively conclude whether the advanced curfew at 6 p.m. across the country on January 16 can remain sufficient.
This Monday, the number of cases increased for the eleventh consecutive day, if we refer to the average of the last seven days.
An average of 20,447 new cases were recorded and 313 people died in hospital every day over the same period.
With a sad record for two months of 445 new victims announced Monday evening.
At the same time, the threshold of 3,000 people in intensive care was crossed for the first time since December 9.
The day was also marked by the announcement of the abandonment of the vaccine projects of Merck and the Pasteur Institute on the one hand, and on the other, that of the effectiveness of Moderna's serum against variants.
The collective protection promised by the vaccine will not be effective until the horizon of several months, when the decisions to be taken concern the very next days.
"The mask on the chin or under the nose is useless, it is no longer tolerable"
In this table, the researchers try to measure the progression of the variants and especially of the English strain.
"About sixty countries are affected and we know that from the moment the VOC-202012/01 variant is there, it takes six weeks to become the majority", details Didier Lepelletier, co-chair of the permanent Covid-19 group at Haut Public Health Council (HCSP).
A month after the first case detected in Tours, Professor Bruno Lina and his Lyon teams from the National Reference Center (CNR) began a second “flash” investigation to estimate a fairer proportion of the British mutant.
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Professor Lepelletier, recalling the measures "to be accumulated" (distance of 2 m, adapted masks, barrier gestures, hand washing, disinfection of the premises, ventilation and control of gauges), raises the tone: "The mask on the chin or under the nose is useless, it is no longer tolerable.
No more than meals served on planes.
People who smoke or phone must obey the measures.
In a hospital environment, caregivers must not remove their masks in the relaxation areas for twenty minutes when having a coffee… ”
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The specialist admits that "confinement, we are sure that it works", but encourages "a stronger adhesion to try to preserve" from this end.
All this while recalling that the opinions of the HCSP are only informative, and, like the President of the Scientific Council Jean-François Delfraissy on Sunday, that the decision to confine is up to the politician.