The fifth wave of Covid-19 “is here”, confirmed Wednesday November 17 on Franceinfo Professor Elie Azoulay, resuscitator, head of the intensive care unit at Saint-Louis hospital, after Gabriel Attal, the government spokesman, affirmed that “the fifth wave is here, it is coming but we have good reason to believe that it will not take everything in its path”. “We cannot say that we are in the same situation as in March-April 2020”, tempers Elie Azoulay. If strengthening health measures remains a decision “eminently political”, the doctor encourages people between 50 and 65 years old to “make an appointment” for the third dose “before the end of the year holidays”.
franceinfo: did this fifth wave arrive at Saint-Louis hospital?
Elie Azoulay: She’s there. I couldn’t say it’s a fifth wave since we’re not starting from scratch. We’ve never gone down to zero all of this lately. In recent weeks, in recent months, we had a number of our patients infected with Covid all the time. And there are simply more. I work in intensive care, that is to say that it has more patients who are detected positive by the PCR, more patients who are hospitalized, but in a proportion which is less compared to the previous waves, and more than patients in intensive care, but in an even smaller proportion.
Have these arriving patients been vaccinated?
For the most part, no. For the vast majority of the patients we have, they are patients who have not been vaccinated. We also have a group of patients who are immunocompromised and who do not have the necessary immune defenses to develop antibodies following vaccination. So these are patients for whom the absence of immunization is expected. There is a whole set of protocols that are made to limit the severity in these patients, but they can be in intensive care. And then we have patients who have been vaccinated, who have received two injections of the vaccine and who have lost their immunity over time and who are therefore now eligible for the third injection.
Given the situation, do you think it is necessary to strengthen health measures, as is the case with our neighbors? Belgium has decided, for example, to make the wearing of masks more general and to make telework compulsory. Should we do the same?
These are decisions that are eminently political. We are in a country where the vaccination rate is still very impressive. The problem is especially with unvaccinated populations for different reasons. In these people, the vulnerability is immense. And the risk of getting a serious form is major. It is even important enough that these people have to consider the possibility of being vaccinated anyway. However, health measures also depend very much on the way in which the previous waves were absorbed. Today, we cannot say that we are in the same situation as a year ago, and even less than in March-April 2020.
For people who have been vaccinated, is it important to take the third dose?
Yes, especially if the injection was six months old. Over time, the protection against a positive PCR, but also against hospitalization, decreases. And so, when you are six months old, you have to be revaccinated again. This “booster”, this third injection, will once again allow the efficacy expected from previous vaccines. With the third injection, we return to efficacy against positivity, hospitalization and hospitalization in intensive care.
Does this third dose work very quickly, unlike the first two doses?
Absoutely. It is effective in a few days. And it is recommended, including for people who are between 50 and 65 years old, when the second injection is five to six months old, to make an appointment and organize things to have it done, especially before. the end of year celebrations or family reunions will once again expose each other to new contaminations.