Is France on the verge of a new wave of coronavirus? That’s what fears Antoine Flahault, epidemiologist and director of the Institute of Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva, who alerted this Wednesday to the epidemic rebound linked to the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants from Portugal. “The epidemic curve is exponential in France”, he warns, while in Portugal, “mortality was very high” in recent weeks and particularly in people over 80 years old.
Antoine Flahault calls for vigilance because “what is happening in Portugal could happen with a few weeks delay here” :
Can we speak of an epidemic recovery in France?
Yes. In almost all Western European countries at the moment, we see a very clear rebound. In France in particular. The epidemic curve is exponential in France, it looks like a new wave which seems to be led by these new BA.4 and BA.5 variants of Omicron. The wave will affect all regions of metropolitan France. And when we talk about the Overseas Territories, there is a somewhat special case which is that of Martinique. It is the French region which has the highest incidence today and also the high mortality rate. It’s probably related to another Omicron sub-variant. A North American sub-variant called BA2.12.1. Omicron is a large family…
Are we sufficiently protected by vaccination today in France?
It all depends on what is called “we”, that is to say that people who have a complete regimen are very well protected against severe forms. They are not protected against having the Covid unfortunately because it is no longer exactly the same strain. But mortality has been very high in recent weeks in Portugal with this BA.5 wave.
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This subvariant is not much more violent than the others, but 93% of the observed mortality occurred in people over the age of 80. So people over 80 are at very high risk, including this summer, of mortality from this variant. You will have to be extremely careful in nursing homes, extremely careful with the elderly. We will have to be extra vigilant in the weeks and months to come. The risk of dying from it is significant, the risk of being hospitalized and of having a complicated form is significant.
Do you have an idea of the date of the epidemic peak or is it still too much?
It’s too early. The forecast that we make in Geneva with the Ecole polytechnique of Lausanne and Zurich covers seven days. But I can say that South Africa finished this wave in eight weeks, it was the shortest of all their waves. Portugal is six weeks away and has reached its peak, it seems. So Portugal risks having it for nine or ten weeks. If we transposed the Portuguese situation to France, we will have it for a good part of the summer. We cannot foresee, we cannot predict, but we can anticipate. We can say that what is happening in Portugal could happen with a few weeks of delay here. We remember Lombardy, Italy and we didn’t want to believe it. We didn’t think all this would happen to us and then it all happened. So yes, we can anticipate because the deaths we are talking about are deaths that, for the most part, are preventable. If we test early, if we prescribe effective antiviral treatments in the very first days of infection, then we can really save lives. This has been demonstrated in clinical trials, we must take advantage of these therapeutic advances in real life.
We had talked about a virus less resistant to heat. This is not the case finally?
Respiratory viruses, in general, are less transmissible when you are outdoors. At least 95%, perhaps 99% of contaminations take place in closed, poorly ventilated environments, where there are many people. In summer, often it is the opposite, we are more often outside. But at the moment with the heat wave, people are told to close the windows, in nursing homes we try not to bring in the hot air from the outside. So, there are risks finally during the summer of the spread of this virus. As we have seen, Australia and New Zealand experienced a major wave in the middle of their summer. Portugal has been experiencing very mild weather conditions since the beginning of May.