There are figures which, in normal times, could be enough to close a debate.
But when it comes to vaccination, everything immediately becomes much more complicated.
While opponents of the health pass are preparing to demonstrate across the country on Saturday, the Directorate of Research, Studies and Evaluation of Statistics (DREES) has just delivered the latest results from the cross-referencing of vaccination statistics, d hospitalizations and screening for Covid-19.
Traveling this Friday to Orly airport, the Director General of Health Jérôme Salomon recalled the main lessons. "We have a national study carried out on tests, on hospitalized patients and people vaccinated in France in August and it shows that we have eight times less contamination when we are vaccinated and that we have eleven times less risk of being admitted to critical care. And when we know the pain of families, the distress of families when there is a loved one who is in critical care, it is a very strong message: vaccination considerably reduces the risk of being hospitalized in critical care.This is a very important message for all populations who still doubt the importance of vaccination (…) There is a real protective impact of vaccination with the vaccines that we have in France. "
Jérôme Salomon ensures that vaccination reduces the risk of being contaminated by "8 times" and of being admitted to critical care by "11 times" pic.twitter.com/zkMfiP9Zei
- BFMTV (@BFMTV) August 20, 2021
What does this study of the DREES tell us, carried out in “real life” as Jérôme Salomon likes to remind us? Its results, to begin with, relate to analyzes carried out between 2 and 8 August. These are the latest figures available in France. It appears that over this period, the vaccinated were actually 11 times less likely than the unvaccinated to be cared for in critical care services. “The unvaccinated people represent 84% of the entries in critical care and 76% of those in conventional hospitalization during the first week of August”, writes the Drees in its press release. This gap is all the more important given that "the share of unvaccinated people is 38% and that of fully vaccinated people is 47%," recalls the Drees.
We see in this other visualization that unvaccinated people bear most of the increase in hospitalizations over the past few weeks.
3 / pic.twitter.com/BKsL71Mh6d
- Nicolas Berrod (@nicolasberrod) August 20, 2021
These results correspond to the peak of contaminations recorded so far in this fourth wave. Vaccines, remember, are not 100% effective. More than in previous publications of the DREES, these figures confirm whether it is still necessary for vaccines to protect very effectively against severe forms of the disease. We find in fact more or less the differences noted during previous analyzes of the DREES. Between August 2 and 8, fully vaccinated patients represent 9% of patients admitted to critical care and 17% of patients hospitalized for conventional care, respectively, compared to 10 and 14% between July 26 and August 1.
Let us come to contaminations. La Drees, as noted by Jérôme Salomon, actually notes that the rate of positive PCR tests is “almost 8 times lower for people who are fully vaccinated”. More precisely, the number of positive PCR tests per 100,000 unvaccinated inhabitants amounts to almost 400, while it is only slightly more than 50 per 100,000 vaccinated inhabitants. However, there is a significant bias with regard to this statistic, linked to the fact that fully vaccinated people are tested much less than non-vaccinated people, even more since the implementation of the health pass.
