Notice to the impatient, the return to a life without constraint, or epidemic outbreak may not be immediately.
"The return to normal life?
It may be 2022, or 2023. (…) We will win but I think we have entered into something longer, ”said the President of the Scientific Council Jean-François Delfraissy on Friday at the microphone of BFMTV-RMC .
If the number of contaminations has exploded in recent days, France has not yet reached its peak, according to the professor.
While the health authorities have counted more than 20,000 new cases in the last 24 hours, an average of “50,000 new contaminations” could be reached “in early August”, he estimates.
To counter this epidemic outbreak, "there is no quick fix", argues Jean-François Delfraissy, calling for "a return to simple barrier measures" such as hand washing or even wearing a mask, even outdoors.
"It is not possible to go towards confinement at the start of the school year"
Vaccinated for several weeks, the professor "continues to wear the mask" outside "in Paris or in the Paris region".
"If you are vaccinated and you are in a context, yes wear it", insists the scientist.
"It is not possible to go towards confinement at the start of the school year, that's why we must prevent by relying on a broad vaccination, on the health pass and the resumption of health actions".
Jean-François Delfraissy, President of the Scientific Council: "It is not possible to go towards confinement at the start of the school year" pic.twitter.com/bEiYuvBFGV
- BFMTV (@BFMTV) July 23, 2021
Despite this outbreak of cases in France, the President of the Scientific Council maintains that "nothing would have changed" if stronger restrictive measures had been taken.
The Delta variant being "60% more transmissible" than the Alpha variant, "we could have closed everything or reopened everything, that would not have changed anything", judges the specialist, for whom "we did well to reopen" a large number. establishments during deconfinement.
“The question, now that the variant is there, is to what extent we should reopen…”.
"Probably" a new variant in winter
The case of nightclubs poses a particular question, according to the expert, for whom these establishments are “places at risk”, with a strong potential of clusters. “The various European countries which are at a higher level of vaccination than us, have just shown that a series of large clusters started from discotheques. I know that by saying that, I will create reactions, but it is a scientific and medical reality ”. And to add: "As long as the health pass is not completely in place, I would say let's be careful".
Finally, if the Delta variant is currently at the center of concerns, nothing says that a new one will take its place within a few months, underlines the scientist. "We will probably have another variant which will arrive in the course of the winter", he anticipates, adding that "this virus has exceptional mutation capacities".