“Very clearly, the most likely scenario would be for the virus to return next fall”, said Thursday, February 3 on franceinfo doctor Benjamin Davido, infectious disease specialist and medical director and Covid-19 referent at the Raymond Poincaré hospital in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine). He asks “still a little patience” to the French. According to him, we are heading towards “something that will resemble the management of the flu”, while the Minister of Health Olivier Véran is rather optimistic, specifying that the peak of contaminations is probably behind us, that that of hospitalizations is approaching. The minister even mentions the possible end of the mask indoors in the spring.
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franceinfo: Put away the mask in the spring, does that seem possible to you?
Benjamin Davido: To do so before spring seems unreasonable for several reasons. The first is that we know that there is an increase in contamination which is quite obvious in October and December due to this coronavirus and that in the spring, we will live a little more outside and that we will probably be in a helping seasonality.
“The other element in deciding to be able to remove the mask indoors is that we hope that the population will have reached this famous collective immunity which, until then, seemed to be an oasis.
Benjamin Davido, infectious disease physicianat franceinfo
When you have almost 500,000 contaminations declared, that is to say around a million daily, we can clearly see that after 60 days, you have reached the entire population and that we are in a radically different from what happened before.
Will there be places where it will be necessary to continue to wear the mask?
First, reasonably, one of the questions we can ask ourselves is: can we not wear the mask regardless of the number of people? People do not remember well, but, last April, the High Authority for Health had authorized vaccinated people to meet up to 10 in an indoor space as long as the space is well ventilated. And then, in very high-risk spaces, in particularly at risk, immunocompromised people, this will probably not be recommended. But we will above all arrive at my opinion, according to the epidemiological data of the end of the wave, on something which will resemble the management of the flu. And so, we will have to see if we are able to bear living without a mask, as we do with the flu depending on the number of deaths and above all, if the virus “seasonal”that is to say the absence of recurrence of subsequent waves.
Should the number of deaths be monitored closely?
Beyond the number of deaths, it must be very clearly realized that in reality, it will not stop with the wave of a magic wand. And me, what really scares me the most is that we are in this intoxication of complacency saying to ourselves: that’s it, the Omicron wave got the better of us, like in Denmark, like in England. It is not enough to look at what others are doing. We must act, we must anticipate and that very clearly the scenario, the most likely would be that the virus returns next fall. And so, it will be necessary to have vaccinated the 15 to 20 million French people who are the most fragile and who will in fact need it with a new adapted Omicron variant and things will go well, but that’s still a lot of elements. We must therefore always remain very careful because the hospital must be in the right conditions, the resuscitation beds must have been emptied and the deprogramming may have been postponed as in the world before.
Olivier Véran announced that an infection is equal to an injection of vaccine to obtain his vaccination pass. Is it relevant?
This term, “one infection equals one injection” had been used before. I have already had two doses. I’m on my second infection, that’s four. In fact, we’re going to stop counting. The reality is that we will rely on reminders. The right question is to say in reality: who will need this vaccine the most when everyone has been infected? We did a mathematical model, we estimate that at the end of March, we will be in these conditions. But it must be understood that the virus and variants can play tricks on us and that we are not immune. There are people who have never come across the virus, including people, unfortunately, who are not vaccinated and we are still receiving them in the hospital, who will have to be vaccinated at some point. It still takes a little patience.