INTERVIEW
Next Monday, Emmanuel Macron will speak to announce an extension of the confinement. However, the conditions for future deconfinement are already being studied. The government's Scientific Council recently published an opinion on the subject. Invited from Europe 1 on Thursday, Doctor Pierre-Louis Druais came to detail the recommendations of the Scientific Council of which he is a member. For him, one thing is certain: the deconfinement does not announce the immediate return to "life before".
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"We will have to put in place a certain number of measures to identify positive people, measures to isolate positive people and longer measures to isolate people at risk," said the general practitioner straight away. Three issues arise according to him.
De-saturate hospital services
At the forefront of the fight against the epidemic, hospital services are subject to "extreme working conditions", in the words of Pierre-Louis Druais. "We have to go back to a number of beds corresponding to the initial availability, which was just over 5,000 beds." The doctor recalls that, since the beginning of the epidemic, the number of beds available in intensive care has doubled, deeply disrupting the organization of health facilities. The desaturation of services will also require time to adapt. Clearly, the deconfinement will be done when the hospitals breathe a little better.
Decrease the number of new cases
Creating the conditions for leaving containment therefore implies reducing the number of new cases. Professor Pierre-Louis Druais mentions on this subject the rate of reproduction of the virus, or "R zero". This indicates the average number of people infected with a single carrier. "When the threshold is lower than 1 we will know that we have a reduction capacity", he assures. The population will have to be massively equipped with masks to avoid any resurgence of the virus.
Organize surveillance
Finally, there is the issue of screening. For several weeks, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, has reaffirmed his desire to increase France's testing capacity. These, as part of the deconfinement, must allow to quickly identify new cases in order to treat them locally. In the same way, Pierre-Louis Druais poses as a condition the ease of access to screening tests and serological tests.
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He also argued that isolation procedures should remain in force. The case of so-called "at risk" people is the subject of particular concerns. The over 70s and individuals with certain "weaknesses" could thus be subject to the obligation to have an authorization to end their quarantine. This could be issued by an attending physician or a nurse.