INTERVIEW
The Covid-19, finished? "No, the virus is still circulating", Catherine Hill firmly replies to the microphone from Europe 1. Guest of Bernard Poirette's morning show this Saturday, the epidemiologist returned to the deconfinement and the evolution of the epidemic in France. For her, it is important not to relax, because even if the hardest work has been done, there could be a second wave of the pandemic.
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"People are paying more attention"
Above all, the coronavirus is still circulating in France, warns Catherine Hill. "There are outbreaks here and there, it is obvious that the virus is there. There are people who are currently infected and infecting, and in addition we do not know where they are", says- it at the microphone of Europe 1. However, the epidemic ebb seems to be confirmed, with a drop in the number of cases in hospital departments. "People are paying more attention," says the epidemiologist. "But there are still aggregations of cases," warns the epidemiologist.
"It does not take much" to revive the disease in the territory, according to her. Catherine Hill takes as an example the football match which took place in Alsace despite the ban on gatherings of more than ten people. "It only takes a soccer match with a very infected person, and poof, you have infected a few hundred, and then these people will infect others".
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"The problem with this virus is that everything is going very fast"
"The problem with this virus is that everything is going very fast," insists Catherine Hill. "People are contagious before being symptomatic, so you can't find them if you don't look for them," says the epidemiologist. "We are not looking for asymptomatic positive people," she laments at the microphone of Europe 1, recalling that only asymptomatic people and their contacts are tested. "It’s all done slowly."
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Thus, to avoid any restart of the epidemic, Catherine Hill offers to take inspiration from China by testing the entire population. "They do group tests," says the epidemiologist. "They collect the samples of 20 people in a single tube and if the tube is negative, these 20 people are presumed negative. With this system, we could test the population more widely," she concludes.