According to the latest report from the modeling team at Imperial College London, published at the end of March, no less than 3% of the French population has already been contaminated by Covid-19. Or 2 million French people. A figure much higher than the some 50,000 confirmed cases, identified at the end of last month by the Directorate General of Health.
How do British researchers arrive at this value, and why is the difference so great with the official figures? The answer to the second point is quite simple: France does little genetic testing for the virus (PCR method), and mainly on patients admitted to hospital. A practice that excludes the majority of infected people who have symptoms but do not require hospitalization, not to mention all carriers who have no symptoms.
Read also: Coronavirus: is France following a better or worse trajectory than the other countries?
The difficulty therefore remains unresolved: how to determine what proportion of the population is affected, without an epidemiological study
This article is for subscribers only. You still have 71% to discover.
Subscribe: € 1 the first month
cancellable at any time
Enter your emailAlready subscribed? Log in