The isolation rules for contact cases could be changed by the end of the year.
This is what the Minister responsible for Housing, Emmanuelle Wargon said this Friday, December 24 at the microphone of France Info.
Read alsoA Christmas in the shadow of the Omicron variant
“
In December we made very strict rules for the isolation of people with Covid Omicron, while waiting to understand how that part of the virus behaved.
Now we know that, probably, these rules can be relaxed,
”she said.
As a reminder, contact cases are now obliged to isolate themselves for 10 days, or even 17 when the person in question shares his home with a person positive for Covid-19.
In the first situation, ie for a “
classic
”
contact case
, the government could consider reducing the isolation period from 10 to 7 days.
For the second, if the person shares his home with a person who tested positive, the isolation could go from 17 to 10 days.
This Thursday, Olivier Véran had also initiated the possibility of a modification of the rules in force.
"
I asked the Scientific Council that we could determine at the beginning of next week at the latest what the isolation procedures will be.
That is, are we treating the Omicron variant like we treated the Delta variant
, ”he said.
The government, which estimated that the Omicron variant could be in the majority in France "
between Christmas and New Year
", also fears a wave with more than 100,000 cases per day, a considerable number of contact cases and isolations.
Read alsoWill the Omicron variant be in the majority in France between Christmas and New Year's Day?
This announcement follows the recommendations of the Scientific Council, published a few hours earlier.
In its text, the Board warns in particular of the risk of “
disorganization
” of the company at the beginning of January in the face of the considerable increase in positive cases and contact cases due to the Omicron variant.
These recommendations are themselves based on the two British studies published on Wednesday 22 December.
Their conclusions raise hope, however, since they show that at this stage the hospitalizations linked to the new variant would be 20 to 30% lower than those linked to the previous variants.
Read also Omicron danger: this reassuring news that comes to us from Great Britain
The 17-day isolation for Omicron contact cases has already been criticized. On his Twitter account, Antoine Flahault, epidemiologist and director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva returned to this provision: "
Knowing that on average one person infects more than 10 people, with 100,000 cases per day, that's 1 million contact cases in quarantine for 7 to 17 days, or 10 million stops generated every day…
”. “
In 3 days, the country's essential services will be at a standstill: the country will be paralyzed. In 7 days the whole country will be in quarantine. Who could have designed such an arrangement?
", He alerted on December 22 before concluding:"
Isolating the positives for 5 days is useful, isolating the contact cases,with Omicron is wishful thinking
".
France is not the only country to consider shortening isolation periods.
England went even further on Wednesday: the country extended isolation from 10 to 7 days for people positive for Covid-19, but vaccinated.