“It wouldn’t surprise me at all” that the Omicron variant is “spread insidiously in the various European territories”, commented the epidemiologist and director of the Institute of Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva Antoine Flahault Monday, November 29 on franceinfo, while “eight possible cases” of the variant have been detected in France according to the Ministry of Health. Their sequencing is in progress.
franceinfo: Should we be careful not to panic when faced with the Omicron variant?
Antoine Flahault: Yes, it must be. Anyway, we have variants, we will have new ones. This is not the last of the variants of this pandemic, unfortunately, so what is needed is to do what we know, that is to say, perhaps anticipate catastrophic scenarios, worst-case scenarios. but at least we will only have good surprises at the end.
Can border closures be effective against the advance of the Omicron variant?
Closing borders is only effective if it is done early, very early in the spread of an infectious agent. We have seen in this pandemic that those who have been fairly vigilant on their borders have rather had gains in health terms compared to those who had left their borders very porous. The big problem we have is that France and Switzerland are not islands in the middle of the ocean, so it is much more difficult to secure borders within the Schengen area than to secure borders within the Schengen area. borders of New Zealand or Iceland.
Is the suspension of flights between France and South Africa a solution?
I think that anything that can delay the massive arrival of the variant on the territory until we know more about this variant will be welcome. We can very well understand that the States are paying a little attention. It is true that the South Africans are very injured because they were very alert on the sequencing of the virus, they managed to detect this variant and they feel a bit like paying the consequences today. . I think it will be for a short time because, probably, we will quickly realize that the variant is already very present all over the world. It probably emerged – perhaps not in South Africa for that matter – several weeks ago and, now that it has been detected, it is probably already quite widespread.
The health ministry says eight “possible” cases have been detected in France. Sequencing is in progress. Could Omicron already be there?
When we see that it is already in several countries of the world and even in Canada, that it has crossed the Atlantic, we can think that today it has already spread, probably, in an insidious way. It’s a coronavirus. We know coronaviruses well, we know that most contaminations take place with people who are not symptomatic and therefore many forms are very minor. Moreover, South Africans have rather detected minor forms of this variant clinically. It probably spread insidiously in the various European territories, that would not surprise me at all.