- Are the public authorities wrong to alarm the population about a resumption of the Covid-19 epidemic in France?
- This is what many Internet users say, relaying the analysis of the latest hospitalization figures, intensive care admissions and deaths, formulated by Professor Jean-François Toussaint on CNews, on August 18.
- If this approach is the most relevant to judge a possible resumption of the epidemic, the daily number of new hospitalizations and admissions in intensive care, on the rise for several weeks, is cause for concern.
This is called a noticed intervention. Invited on CNews, this Tuesday evening, to comment on the latest figures for the Covid-19 epidemic in France, the professor of physiology and director of the Institute for Biomedical Research and Sports Epidemiology (Irmes), Jean-François Toussaint, engaged in an analysis that marked the spirits, judging by the number of Internet users who have since shared this sequence on social networks.
"Professor Jean-François Toussaint undermines all the media coverage around the coronavirus, a real bomb launched directly"; "Yesterday, Professor Toussaint" scared the CNews journalist "! The journalist finally became aware with amazement of the incredible lies of this government concerning this CO VIDE crisis ”, one can read among the various legends associated with this extract of a few minutes.
After recalling the latest known developments in the number of confirmed cases, deaths, hospitalizations and resuscitation, the CNews journalist on set asks his guest (from 1'08'50 in the replay of the show ) if we should rather speak of "rebound of the epidemic, quivering or second wave" when there are, at this date, 221,267 confirmed cases in France, or 2,338 more in 24 hours.
Professor Toussaint's detailed answer obviously catches him by surprise: “Among all the figures you have shown, those that are important are the last three out of the four, and communication is only made on the first. The main thing, in a pandemic, is to know the number of deaths it causes and also to know the number of severe cases, of hospitalized patients, and in particular in intensive care. "
“Hospitalization curves and resuscitation curves have been steadily decreasing since the beginning of April. And even more, the number of daily total deaths in France […] has not fluctuated for four weeks now. And it's 99% of what the maximum number was on April 6. […] We can see that we have had an absolutely flat curve since the end of June. [There is] an increase in the number of positive cases in France. These are not patients in intensive care, nor hospitalized patients but forms of young, asymptomatic subjects who simply come to ask if their condition is that of a subject who has encountered Covid-19 or if he is at risk. », He continues, with graphics.
He finally gives in to a sharp criticism of the scientific council: “We are no longer in the gravity of spring at all. We are in a use of indicators, a change, an instrumentalisation, which means that we will have for the weeks to come changes in behavior, orientations which are decided by a scientific council which no longer looks at the reality of the risk but which wishes probably impose other thought patterns. "
20 Minutes takes stock of these assertions.
FAKE OFF
The methodological approach claimed by Jean-François Toussaint is indeed the most relevant, as the epidemiologist Catherine Hill confirms at 20 Minutes : "Looking only at the number of positive cases, it's a bad method, he is right about it. : people have tested positive for Covid-19, there are more of them than before, yes, but we are doing more tests. "
"On the other hand, we know absolutely nothing about the seriousness of these cases, we do not have data on it", she adds, while specifying: "The other problem of known cases is that 'They are a huge underestimate of the number of actual cases since they only concern the portion of the population that has been tested, massive population testing should be done rather than testing people who have symptoms. For an epidemiogist, the incidence of the disease is the number of real cases, not the number of cases found. "
The evolution of the number of deaths, hospital admissions and intensive care admissions is therefore the most likely to indicate a resumption of the epidemic. But some of the figures put forward by CNews, taken from Santé Publique France, are misleading.
In its report dated August 18, the chain indicates an increase of 2,228 positive cases and 17 deaths in 24 hours (while there are actually 22 more deaths on the updated figures of August 17), but a decrease 102 hospitalizations and 4 intensive care patients in 72 hours. This seems to go in the direction of the words of Jean-François Toussaint on an improvement of the situation since April, if one is based on the figures of resuscitation and hospitalization.
A declining total number of hospitalized and intensive care patients ... but arrivals on the rise
However, if several patients are indeed released from the hospital, which explains this decrease over three days and this negative national balance, the daily number of intensive care admissions remains on the rise. This is what Public Health France noted from its epidemiological update on August 13: “The number of intensive care hospitalizations continues to increase: it went from 78 in week 28 (from July 6 to 12) to 122 in week 32. "
A phenomenon also observed for the number of new hospitalizations, in its daily report of August 17: “The number of people hospitalized for [Covid-19] has been increasing for 3 weeks, especially among those under 40 years old. "
Thus, although the respective curves of hospitalization and resuscitation have remained mainly flat since the end of June thanks to the number of patients discharged from the hospital, as Jean-François Toussaint rightly pointed out, they have experienced an increase in arrivals for several weeks. . This can be verified in particular in the curves available on the Géodes site of Public Health France, or even with the figures for the very last days: +34 admissions in intensive care on August 17, +28 the next day, and +31 the day after.
And the figures are similar for new hospitalizations, with +234 on August 17, +185 on the 18th and +162 on the 19th, against a much lower average in June and until mid-July.
"We are very far from what we experienced at the worst of the epidemic but it is a thrill"
“What we can see, with the latest figures, is that intensive care admissions have been increasing since around July 16, or more than a month ago. We were a little above 10 on average between mid-June and mid-July and there were on average 20 people who were hospitalized in intensive care each day during the last week, which ended yesterday ” , says Catherine Hill.
“Looking at the graph from afar, we can think that 374 people in intensive care as of August 19 is rather encouraging and fairly constant, but over the last few days, the increase is significant. The death figures are not overwhelming, but as the number of intensive care units increases, the deaths may also increase, a little later, ”continues the epidemiologist.
And to conclude: "We are very far from what we experienced at the worst of the epidemic: 20 cases per day of arrivals in intensive care, it is a thrill [compared to the 700 arrivals per day in April, for example. ]. But we know that the virus continues to circulate and that there are new cases every day, since people are infected. "
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