Benjamin Davido, infectious disease specialist, medical director and Covid-19 referent at Garches hospital (Hauts-de-Seine), said on Friday December 31 on franceinfo that the “double vaccine and natural immunity will probably be acquired very quickly” in 2022 after the wave of the Omicron variant which affects France. Despite “the vertical curve” contaminations “which makes you dizzy”, it’s a “optimistic scenario”, according to him, that we can consider.
franceinfo: Is the South African scenario, with a drop in contamination of the Omicron variant, a glimmer of hope?
Benjamin Davido: In South Africa, the populations are younger. Paradoxically, they are also less vaccinated. Clearly, this is a scenario which is obviously eminently reassuring because we can say that, paradoxically, they had fewer deaths than the previous waves, and in particular that of last year, even though they were 30 % of vaccinated. We can imagine that in France, in Europe, where we have widely vaccinated, we will possibly have the effect of the vaccination and the effect of Omicron. What we hope, of course, is not to have hospitals overcrowded. In England, there has been a 50% increase in hospitalizations. This hospital rush which, as you know today, obliges us to a massive deprogramming at the Public Assistance – Hospitals of Paris, medical and surgical, should not entail a loss of opportunity for some.
So, we must remain cautious, could this not be the same scenario in France?
In South Africa, it is the southern winter. It is radically different. We are just starting this winter season. What is certain is that we have the impression that we are dealing with an extremely contaminating variant. We can congratulate ourselves today that we have more than a third of the French population having had three doses. The optimistic scenario, it is only one scenario, it is that of this double vaccine and natural immunity which will probably be acquired very quickly at the end of this blast. When you look at the contaminations curve, it is no longer a curve in France, it is a vertical line that makes you dizzy. So, we can hope that the year 2022 brings us this collective immunity so hoped for in 2020. We knew how difficult it was to obtain it.
The short-term goal is not to overload hospitals?
Yes, very clearly. First, because today, it should be remembered that there are 5 million French adults who are not vaccinated. Among these people, 0.5% will end up in the hospital. If my calculations are correct, that’s 25,000 people, certainly not in one day, but during this wave. It is very crowded, with a probability for these people that things will go wrong, to have sequelae … I am not even talking about the long Covid. Can you imagine the children who are followed for lymphoma and who have chemotherapy deprogrammed next week because the hospitals are at full capacity? This is terrible! It is terrible for the caregivers. As the saying goes: prevention is better than cure. Once again, if this scenario goes very well, we will all be happy and it will be the best news of 2022.