19 departments subject to harsher measures ... and how many tomorrow?
Nothing says that the system put in place by the government will remain this one.
But Thursday, March 25, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran had clearly revealed about twenty territories "under reinforced surveillance" because of the Covid-19 epidemic, and which therefore risked being in turn affected by a turn of screw.
The choice seemed arbitrary and based on the incidence rate alone, that is to say the number of positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the past week, when it was greater than 250.
A week later, the situation is far from having improved.
The incidence has increased in all of these territories.
In seven days, the increase is at least 20% in half of them, reaching 50% in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and 60% in the Hautes-Alpes.
The incidence rate there now almost systematically exceeds the value 300. The threshold of 400, put forward by Jean Castex in mid-March, is crossed in five of these departments, all located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.
The previous maximum alert threshold often exceeded
More generally, the epidemic situation is deteriorating almost everywhere in France, even in those already "confined".
To the point that the hypothesis of a real “hard” confinement of all or part of the country, with the closure of schools, is no longer excluded, and will suddenly be debated during the Defense Council this Wednesday morning.
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A large south-eastern quarter is on alert with an incidence growth rate often exceeding 30%.
This does not mean that the others are safe, warns epidemiologist Pascal Crepey.
"It is not because growth is weak that we are not in an exponential," he explains, in unison with the entire scientific community.
“If we start with a mechanism with a doubling time of one week, we start from 10, then 20, 40, 80, 160, etc.”, illustrates this specialist in modeling.
If we look at the moment T, almost all of France is now in the red and the difference concerns the shades of color.
The incidence rate is over 250 in 60 departments and only the Atlantic coast remains, as always, relatively spared.
250 was the maximum alert threshold set at the beginning of the fall.
No more metropolitan area has an incidence of less than 50.
This indicator is one of the main ones put forward by the government, but it is imperfect and limited.
On the one hand, it only reflects infections confirmed by a positive sample.
On the other hand, it also depends a lot on the number of tests carried out on the territory in question.
In intensive care, "we are a little cornered"
The situation at the hospital is less skewed, although it reflects the epidemic situation of two weeks ago.
The hospital services, and in particular those of resuscitation, are sometimes under great strain.
Nationally, the peak of the second wave was even exceeded on Monday.
Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur is the third region, with Île-de-France and Hauts-de-France, where the intensive care occupancy rate of Covid patients is greater than 100% of the initial capacity.
"We have more and more and we are a little cornered", testifies Marc Leone, the head of the intensive care unit of the North hospital in Marseille.
Forty of the 62 patients treated in his unit are infected with Covid-19.
At the bottom of the wave in January, that number had dropped to ten.
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No question for him to hear about "sorting of patients", as mentioned by emergency physicians and resuscitators of Public Assistance - Hospitals of Paris.
“We will not let a patient die who has had a road accident or trauma.
If this continues, the only solution will be to deprogram even more surgeries and only do emergency work, ”he says.
"Uncertain" effect of the new measures
In Île-de-France, where 1,500 Covid patients are cared for in these critical care services, the Regional Health Agency has already asked to mobilize 2,200 resuscitation beds.
Doctors and authorities are all the more worried that the incidence rate has continued to increase in recent days, reaching 640. Ten days after the entry into force of new restrictions - very limited -, such as the closure of businesses that do not sell basic necessities, more and more doctors and scientists believe that this will not be enough.
In its opinion sent to the government on Monday, the Scientific Council modestly qualified the effect of these new measures as "uncertain".
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The executive insists that it must deal with other factors, such as the acceptability of the measures taken and their impact on mental health.
However, "I have no objective reason to think that the health situation will improve in the short term without new announcements, unless I bet that things will get better thanks to the good weather, for example", comments Pascal Crepey.
Marc Leone sighs, ten days after the Carnival organized in a quarter of his city: “The commotion that we see outside is really not compatible with what we experience in the hospital.
"