- The President of the Republic promised Monday evening a gradual lifting of the confinement in four weeks.
- Back to school and resumption of work in many sectors will be possible from May 11, but the conditions for this deconfinement have not yet been revealed, since the executive has four weeks to define them.
- The wearing of a “general public” mask could be generalized, and mass screening of people with symptoms of coronavirus is planned. But these announcements do not remove all concerns.
The light at the end of the tunnel. While many of us are experiencing the constraint of confinement more and more badly, President Macron has given a date that finally allows us to imagine the beginning of a return to normal life. Monday evening, in his televised address, the head of state announced a gradual deconfinement from May 11. Still four weeks (at least) to hold. Four weeks during which the executive, municipalities, businesses or schools will have to work on a resumption of activity in complete safety, while the coronavirus pandemic is still far from behind and that France has crossed the 15,000 mark of Covid-19 deaths.
The government will present "a complete plan to get out" of containment "well before the date of May 11," said Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Tuesday. Plan which must "put in place the instruments, methods, employment doctrine, necessary coordination". But will there not be a risk of transmission of Covid-19 in schools? Will hospitals be ready for a possible second wave of patients? For the time being, the conditions for this gradual deconfinement still raise many uncertainties.
Will there be masks for everyone and how will they be distributed?
Long rejected by the government, the widespread use of masks could be one of the conditions for deconfinement. Will the state be able to provide it to everyone? Recognizing that the masks could not be distributed "as much as we would have liked", Emmanuel Macron assured that from May 11, "the State will have to allow each French to get a mask for the general public" . But where and how to recover these masks? And what type of masks? Urban France, an organization representing all of the major cities, urban communities, agglomeration communities and major cities of France, requests "the development of a national strategy." We are waiting, as of now, for the government to clarify the distribution of roles between the State and the local communities, in terms of ordering, supply, storage, distribution channels for masks, "urges the organization, recalling in passing that" the recent requisitions for orders have illustrated the danger of an insufficiently concerted approach to the matter ”.
"The hypothesis of proceeding from local communities, town halls, is indeed one of the hypotheses that we are considering," said the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, adding that these masks will be "probably available" for free in town halls. Masks neither surgical, nor FFP2 - reserved for nursing staff -, but general public models which "will also have the capacity to be washable and therefore to be usable several times". The methods of financing these masks, on the other hand, "remain to be clarified", underlines urban France.
Aren't children at risk of getting coronavirus at school and relaunching the epidemic?
"There is an imperative [back to school] that is real, it cannot be done at the cost of health," Edouard Philippe said on Tuesday. It must be combined with the need to preserve the health of our fellow citizens, to guarantee compliance with health rules ”. However, "not all schools will be open" on this date, said the Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer. The gradual recovery "necessarily implies that we are not going to have the same ages who return at the same time", and "there can not be large groups" in the classes, he said again, while " the development of a methodology ”is planned in the coming days.
But the announcement of the pupils' return to school is causing concern and criticism, especially among teachers. "It is anything but serious to reopen the schools on May 11, because we are told that all public places are closed, the cinemas, the performance halls, but not the schools, when we know that it is a place of high transmission, of high contamination, there is a lack of precaution, it seems to be in total contradiction with the rest ”, reacted Francette Popineau, general secretary of Snuipp-FSU, first primary union. The president of the Federation of Doctors of France, Jean-Paul Hamon, said he was "worried" by an announcement that would run "an unnecessary risk".
So Tuesday, the Minister of National Education did not rule out making "wearing" the mask for teachers and students. Except that in practice, "we do not even try to wear a mask to a child under the age of 6, it is mission impossible, tempers Dr. Jean-François Pujol, pediatrician in Gironde and member of the National Union of French pediatricians. With young children, but also with adolescents, it is complicated to wear a mask effectively, which is well positioned. This is why the next four weeks should allow researchers to learn more about the role of vectors of the disease that is attributed to children, notes the pediatrician. In this sense, the study led by Professor Robert Cohen, pediatric infectious disease specialist, should quickly shed light on us ”. Professor Robert Cohen who launched this week a study on 600 children in Ile-de-France to assess the transmission of the virus among them. Work, the first results of which are expected in a month, ie on the probable date of deconfinement. But we already know that "the percentage of positive samples from children, seen in the emergency room or hospitalized, is three to five times lower than in adults", he reminded Tuesday on France Inter.
The first region of the globe to have implemented progressive deconfinement at the end of March, Wuhan in China has still not reopened its schools. "Schools are always what we reopen last, because this is what we must close first," commented this Monday on France Inter, Dr. Philippe Klein, French doctor in Wuhan.
Does the screening strategy announced by President Macron allow secure deconfinement?
In recent days, the notion of “immunity passport” has emerged as a deconfinement criterion, supposing massive screening of the population. For the time being, 150,000 tests are carried out each week in France, and screening capacities will gradually increase. So, tomorrow: all tested? "We are more than 60 million in this country, no country in the world has ever been able and will never be able to test everyone," said Olivier Véran on Tuesday. There are countries that are committed to testing anyone who has symptoms, so as to isolate those people, "he continued.
And this is what France has chosen to do. "This is the strategy that sticks the most with reality: testing everyone, including those who do not have symptoms, in a massive manner and overnight is not possible, commented this Tuesday on France 2 Pr Stéphane Gaudry, professor of intensive medicine in intensive care at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis). The tests should be reserved for people who have symptoms, and perhaps extended to contact cases, even asymptomatic, "he suggests.
"This massive screening of symptomatic patients will allow us to focus on quarantining the patients, which is a good thing", analyzes Dr Pujol, acknowledging however that asymptomatic patients, for their part, "will stay out of the nails" .
Are hospitals ready to handle a possible influx of Covid-19 patients when deconfinement begins?
With part of the children returning to school and the majority of the employees returning to work, the coronavirus will circulate more. Perhaps enough to encourage the development of collective immunity, but perhaps also enough to generate new contaminations. Are hospitals able to cope with a second wave of Covid-19 patients? "If a second wave occurs now, we would not be able to absorb it," admitted Professor Gaudry. We will see in four weeks what will happen at that time ”.
However, "if confinement is well observed, the capacity of beds will increase" in the coming weeks, he assured, recalling that to date "in Ile-de-France, 2,600 patients are still in intensive care" . Hence the need to comply again and for the next few weeks with the confinement instructions and barrier gestures. "The important thing [in what the president said] is the word" progressive ", insists the intensive care doctor. The progressiveness will allow us to see the possible effect [of deconfinement] on a new influx in the intensive care unit: if it is a progressive influx that we can bear, deconfinement can be understood, but it depends on the conditions ” in which it will be operated. But, as Dr. Pujol recalls, "deconfinement is not intended to prevent the virus from circulating," emphasizes the pediatrician. The aim is to make it circulate as quickly as possible, and thus avoid congestion in hospitals. ”
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