News from the seventh wave of Covid-19. The decline continues in France, but at an increasingly slower pace, according to the weekly report from Public Health France, which insists on vaccination and barrier gestures during this back-to-school period.
From August 22 to 28, “On the eve of the start of the school year, the circulation of Sars-CoV-2 continued to decrease for the seventh consecutive week in almost all regions”, writes the health agency. With 181 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the incidence rate had not been so low since November 2021 and the arrival of the Omicron variant, she notes.
Public Health France, however, notes a slight increase in the incidence rate among children under 10 years old. If we compare the situation to that of the same period in 2021, “the level of incidence is twice as low” in children, however noted during a press briefing Didier Che, deputy director of the infectious diseases department of SPF, specifying that “screening is much lower, and therefore the positivity rate much higher”.
Hospital admissions also continue to decline, a trend that began about a month and a half ago, but the rate has been falling significantly for a few days. In critical care, the decrease in new admissions in the last week of August was also “less marked than the previous weeks (285, i.e. -9% against -24%)”said Public Health France. Among the oldest, only 32.6% of 60-79 year olds and 46.2% of people aged 80 and over, as well as 50.8% of nursing home residents received a second booster dose of vaccination.
However, an eighth wave of the epidemic has been announced for several weeks by the health authorities. “What we don’t know is how big it will be”but “It will restart and there will be a vaccination campaign which will resume in the fall”, Health Minister Francois Braun said last week.