40% increase in new intensive care admissions, 34% in hospitalizations and 25% in deaths compared to the previous week.
In its report covering the week of September 14 to 20, Public Health France (SpF) reports an
“exponential increase”
in these “
late”
monitoring
indicators
for Sars-CoV-2.
"Late",
because as Mircea Sofonea, lecturer in epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Montpellier reminds us, hospital or intensive care admissions
"are events that occur up to a month after contamination event ”.
With 599 new entries in “sheaves” and 332 deaths, we are certainly far from the figures for spring.
But
"we are still in an ascending phase of the epidemic, almost all indicators are on the rise,"
notes Sophie Vaux, epidemiologist at the health agency, while France has recorded more than 16,000 new cases of Covid-19 in 24 hours Thursday evening.
The positivity rate reached 6.2% last week against 5.5% the previous week, the incidence rate was 99 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and 899 clusters were under investigation.
Metropolises (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Bordeaux, etc.) are particularly affected.
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Truncated data
The circulation of the virus among the elderly is of particular concern to health authorities
"because
these people are among the most at risk of complications from Covid-19
"
.
In people aged 75 and over, the number of contaminations has quadrupled in one month with 55.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
77 new clusters were notably reported in retirement homes last week, in particular in Île-de-France, in the Grand Est or in the Paca region.
However,
"all regions are affected, without exception,"
notes Daniel Lévy-Bruhl, epidemiologist at SpF.
Certainly, recent indicators may seem encouraging in a few rare departments.
In the Alpes-Maritimes, for example, the seven-day incidence rate goes from 157 cases per 110,000 inhabitants on September 14 to 110 cases on the 21st, according to the Géodes site.
“We have a smaller increase in some regions,
notes Sophie Vaux.
But we must remain very careful because we have doubts about the data, which are consolidated with more and more delay.
We would like to announce a stabilization, but it is far too early to talk about it. ”
Read also:
Covid-19: are hospitals ready for a second wave?
Because Public Health France would like to make it clear:
"The strong activity observed in recent weeks has caused a delay"
in the validation of the data.
Clearly, the agency predicts an
"underestimation of the increase in the number of confirmed cases due to the probable saturation of diagnostic capacities"
.
Likewise, the number of reported clusters is undoubtedly well below reality.
Truncated data which hinders the work of the Medicare investigators responsible for tracing infected people.
