“A bed becomes available, a patient comes home”, assured Friday, October 29 on franceinfo Gilles Pialoux, infectious disease specialist and head of the Infectious and Tropical Diseases department at Tenon hospital in Paris. In around 40 departments, the symbolic bar of 50 patients with Covid-19 per 100,000 inhabitants has now been exceeded.
franceinfo: Are you concerned?
Gilles Pialoux: Yes, we are concerned. It is true that we do not have the same situation as England or some Eastern European countries, it goes back a lot more. We have a very high vaccination rate, but here we are in a completely different situation, that is to say that we have both viral circulation which is increasing significantly and which continues to increase. . Then, we have this conjunction, this alignment of problems, that is to say both the recovery of the Covid expected because of the winter, the relaxation of barrier gestures and the insufficiency of vaccines for certain populations, and we have the arrival of winter pathologies in emergencies, and staff exhaustion.
In my department, I have eight beds dedicated to Covid: a bed becomes available, a patient returns, 80% of the unvaccinated.
Gilles Pialouxto franceinfo
Bronchiolitis, indeed, is one of these winter diseases, the flu will soon arrive, but at the same time, you have started to say it, there are soon 50 million people fully vaccinated in France, three quarters Population. Can we have a fifth wave under these conditions?
Gilles Pialoux: We must not lose sight of the fact that this vaccination, which very effectively protects severe forms of hospitalization, resuscitation and of course death, made it possible to attenuate the fourth wave. I don’t know if it’s a fifth wave because in the end we never saw the bottom of this fourth wave. This is a comeback from a viral circulation that has never died out, unlike what happened in the previous summer, the summer of 2020.
Vaccination limits but, as you know, vaccination does not affect everyone, it eludes at least two years, several million adults who are not vaccinated, probably two or three million adults who should to be vaccinated and to be fetched. It is an imperfect limitation and in addition it is a vaccine which protects but which does not prevent the viral circulation.
The barrier gestures are major: it is seat belt, more airbag, more speed limit, otherwise we will not succeed.
Gilles Pialouxto franceinfo
Covid screening tests have not been systematically reimbursed for two weeks. Their number is down: 2.3 million last week, that’s 700,000 less. Have we lost a valuable indicator?
Gilles Pialoux: Yes, we lost a valuable indicator. Afterwards, we will see if Public Health France can manage to make corrected data. In fact, we lost 24% of screening among asymptomatic people mainly because it was they who did not have a prescription and therefore are not taken care of. It is a political decision which is based on the economy and which is not based on health. Its very important. We kept taking as an example Denmark, which is the first country to be confined, the first country to make the pass, the first country to remove the pass.
Denmark is experiencing a resurgence of its virus but has a force of reactivity which is very important. That’s what’s important, you can’t predict, it’s like the weather. We have no visibility beyond 7 days or 14 days of filling the hospital and therefore we need a very high reactivity and the incidence rate allows, among other things, to have a reactivity on the measurements and decision making.