Epidemiologists repeat, what they hope most is to be wrong.
Because their projections have spoken and show that a new high tide of contamination is looming within a few days.
If the English variant, 50% more contagious than the current strain, continues to spread at the same rate, it will become the majority in France in early March.
While a month ago, he was responsible for 3% of new contaminations, this figure rose to 14% on January 27.
"With the measures put in place since January, the virus that we know is shrinking by 6% every week, but the new variant is progressing by 60% every seven days", notes the epidemiologist Philippe Amouyel who has modeled, for the JDD, the progress of the new strain based on the two flash surveys of Public Health France.
For what consequence on the number of patients?
"If we do the math, we see that at the end of February, around 20,000 additional patients may need to be hospitalized", replies this professor of public health at the Lille University Hospital, while this figure is currently more than 27,000. If this threshold is reached, we could reach a sad historical record in France since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic.
As a reminder, during the first wave, 32,292 patients were hospitalized at the height of the crisis on April 14 and 33,497 in mid-November.
"Two different epidemics"
"I am afraid that it will be the calm before the storm", already indicated to us last Tuesday Pascal Crépey, professor-researcher in epidemiology at the School of the high studies in public health.
Admittedly, today the figures for the epidemic remain stable despite a high plateau with 20,000 to 26,000 new daily contaminations since January, but the situation could therefore quickly deteriorate.
“You have to consider that we have two different epidemics today, with different reproduction rates.
"
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So time is running out.
For Pascal Crépey, we must not wait to fight against the spread: “The fire is smoldering.
But its spread is not inexorable.
We just need more strong, better monitored and more effective measures.
It depends on political decisions, but also on individual behavior.
There is no need for the government to decree lockdown today to limit its contacts.
"Renaud Piarroux, epidemiologist and head of the parasitology service at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, also believes that it will soon be necessary - again - to tighten the screw:" Whether we call this confinement or something else, the problem is to close the current places of transmission, in particular high schools, colleges and perhaps schools ”.
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As for Philippe Amouyel, he opts instead for a reinforced curfew on weekends as Guyana did.
And the right time, according to him, is now, during the school holidays which have started for zone A. “Let's take advantage of it, this measure is more bearable when people are on vacation and it would be all the more effective as contacts are reduced during the holidays, because the employees are not at the office, the children absent from schools, which makes it possible to reduce the level of circulation of the virus.
"The epidemic is not" yet "out of control, he warns.
But he calls for not getting used to the death toll from Covid-19: “Today in France, it's the equivalent of an airliner that crashes every day and the problem is is that it does not shock anyone anymore ”.