“It is more a social and political regulation compared to a quite astronomical incidence of the Omicron variant, than something which sticks to the mode of transmission”, explained Sunday, January 3 on franceinfo Gilles Pialoux, infectious disease specialist, head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at Tenon hospital in Paris, after the announcements by the government of a relaxation of the isolation rules for people positive for Covid -19 and contact cases. Without these measures, there was the “risk of total paralysis, especially in the hospital”.
franceinfo: The government has chosen to ease the isolation rules. How do you see these new measures?
Gilles Pialoux: What seems relevant to me is the global project which wants to prevent the Omicron wave, which is added to the Delta wave, paralyzing the public service, the hospital and the schools. I think it’s more of a social and political regulation in relation to a quite staggering incidence of the Omicron variant, than something that sticks to the mode of transmission. But the executive has, since the start of this pandemic, often made choices between two risks. So there is the choice to continue a transmission of the viral circulation by the fact that people can resume activities. But opposite, in the other risk, there was that of a total paralysis, in particular of certain public services, including the hospital. And I think that is what was privileged in the decisions.
Olivier Véran estimated in the JDD that the fifth wave may be the last. Do you agree with his analysis?
I hope that Olivier Véran is right and that after this wave, one could imagine a decline which would be both linked to the fact that Omicron would be less pathogenic, less aggressive, less the cause of hospitalizations and intensive care. . But it really needs to be demonstrated more clearly. And there is the fact that there is still a French success which is to manage to pull people towards the third dose or the booster. Very clearly, the Maginot line is the people who had this third booster dose versus the others. We can see very clearly that with Omicron, this has a huge influence on the failure to switch to severe forms of having had this third dose. So we have figures that are quite satisfactory. But there are still two blind spots. It’s school, with for the moment a total absence of plan adapted to the transmissibility of Omicron. And then, people who are immunocompromised and very fragile, who escape monoclonal antibodies, who escape vaccination … And these people will continue to enter the hospital.
For the school, what do you think would be the most effective measures?
There is something that we have called for a lot and which has not been heard, because the obsession of the Minister of National Education is not to close classes: there are a certain number models that show that when you screen people regularly, especially with a very significant impact on the circulation of the virus in schools – and this will only increase with Omicron – you put fewer children out of the school system than if you expect three contaminations in a class. We know that Omicron diffuses a lot in space. And if there is not a control of the aeration, the CO2 sensors and possibly the filters, we will not succeed. So, with these two systems, repeated screening plus a ventilation system, by adding a repetition of teaching on hand washing and the mask from 6 years old, this will participate in a part of controlling the virus.