“The Covid case curve is really growing extremely large”Jean-Paul Stahl, infectious disease specialist, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at Grenoble University Hospital, declared Friday, December 3 on franceinfo. More than 2,000 patients are currently in intensive care or intensive care due to Covid-19, according to figures released Friday by Public Health France.
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A health council will be held on Monday, December 6, while the government does not rule out announcing new measures next week so as not to be overwhelmed by the fifth wave of Covid-19. faced with the arrival of the Omicronde variant, several cases have been confirmed in mainland France.
franceinfo: Can we speak of a “vertiginous curve” of contamination as the government has done?
Jean-Paul Stahl: The Covid case curve is really expanding tremendously. This is not necessarily very surprising, there are all the conditions that are required. A very contagious virus, the Delta variant, the Omicron it is perhaps the future, the coming cold, the proximity more and more important because because of the cold we find ourselves inside and then the extremely insufficient number of vaccinated. There is a whole section of the population that is not vaccinated and does not want to be and the epidemic is developing among them.
Will the situation in hospitals worsen?
It is not yet the disaster as we have seen in previous episodes. But there is always a 15-day lag between what is happening in the population and the impact in hospitals. For now, hospitals are seeing an increase but they can handle it. What will happen in two weeks, three weeks, I don’t know. We can project that the peak will be after the Christmas and New Years gatherings, but we have learned to be extremely modest about the predictions.
Why don’t we do serology before doing the booster dose ?
Because no one in the world is able to tell you the level of antibodies that protect. Doing an antibody test says if there are any but it does not say how much protection you have. Absolutely no one can tell you that. So doing a serology to say if we vaccinate or not would be totally useless. We do not have the threshold above or below which you are protected.
What additional steps must be taken to save the Christmas holidays ?
Make vaccination compulsory because it is the key to success and to ending the epidemic. More than 90% of people hospitalized for Covid are unvaccinated or poorly vaccinated. The second point, one can take barrier measures to prevent transmission from a carrier to a receptor, but these measures are intended to protect the unvaccinated.