In the headlines: the numbers of the Covid-19 epidemic jump in France
Audio 05:03
Police officers on bikes wearing face masks patrol the Esplanade du Trocadéro, near the Eiffel Tower, on August 24, 2020, in Paris.
AFP / Ludovic Marin
By: Norbert Navarro
10 mins
Publicity
The figures alarm those who count the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus.
“
123 people have died from Covid-19 (in hospitals) in France in the past 24 hours,
” reports the website of the newspaper
Le Figaro
.
"
For the first time since the end of confinement, the number of deaths has doubled in seven days
: 265 deaths this week, against 129 the previous one
", points
Le Parisien
.
Verification made,
Le Figaro
online
reports that these figures "
were in fact distorted by the unaccounted balance sheet of a hospital in the Ile-de-France for several weeks
".
But still…
Le Parisien
notes that on Friday, more than 13,000 positive cases were recorded in 24 hours.
"
France had never counted so many contaminations in one day
", scares
Le Parisien
.
So if we add to this count the hospitalizations which increased by 45% in one week, the number of patients admitted in intensive care which increased by 48% during the same period, we better understand the question of Une du
Parisien
: "
Can we avoid implosion?
".
It is in this worrying context that the saliva tests received the launch authorization on Friday.
Tests intended only for people showing symptoms of contamination.
But this arrival of saliva tests "
will not be enough to relieve the pressure,
" warns
Le Parisien
.
Opinion shared by
Le Figaro
.
Which daily recalls that the Academy of Medicine had declared itself in favor of the technique of saliva tests “
from June 30.
But, instead of attempting a large-scale experiment in the field, the French experts took two and a half months to launch studies and deliver their conclusions.
As if there was no emergency,
”cries
Le Figaro
.
In this newspaper, a person close to the head of state says that Emmanuel Macron himself is “
upset about the tests, that's for sure.
He talks about it to everyone, he says that we could be better, and he fears that this is the second scandal after the masks
”.
The confusion persists and the French have the blues
“
The return to school has never been so harsh
, notes
Liberation
(…).
This Covid-19 generates a feeling of almost generalized mental fatigue
”, the French are“
distressed by the epidemic (and) torn between health injunctions and economic imperatives
”.
In this daily, the historian Georges Vigarello, author of a
History of fatigue
(Seuil), explains that “
the Covid also trivializes threats, it introduces another relationship to time and space
(uncertainty about the activities to on the one hand, dangers from poorly controlled places on the other).
Finally, a feeling of physical vulnerability that our societies had largely forgotten reappears.
A deaf concern sets in, especially since an unknown dominates: the more than floating date of the disappearance of such an
"evil" ", decrypts Georges Vigarello in
Liberation
.
French Ambassador to Côte d'Ivoire Gilles Huberson recalled to Paris
According to
La Lettre du Continent
- which reveals it - it is "
in all discretion
" and for "
administrative reasons
" that the Quai d'Orsay recalled its ambassador to Abidjan.
This confidential letter sees it as a “
turnaround
”, which it describes as “
brutal
”, because, she recalls, “
less than two weeks ago, the French ambassador to Côte d'Ivoire Gilles Huberson attended the interviews conducted by Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée with Alassane Ouattara
”.
After this lunch between the two heads of state, on September 4, the French ambassador in Côte d'Ivoire "
returned to Abidjan
", underlines
La Lettre du Continent
.
"
But the following week, the diplomat
(...)
was recalled to Paris for, according to the diplomatic understatement in these cases,
" an administrative question under examination "" (the understatement is this figure of rhetoric which consists in weakening the expression of the thought to imply more than one says).
Another reminder from
La Lettre du Continent
: in 2017, it was the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who “
weighed in so that it was Huberson who succeeded Georges Serre as ambassador in Ivory Coast
”.
Finally being reminded that the first round of the Ivorian presidential election is scheduled for October 31,
La Lettre du Continent
emphasizes
that this reminder to Paris from the French ambassador comes at a time when Paris "
plays a complex partition between wait-and-see attitude and disapproval of Alassane Ouattara's desire to succeed himself
”.
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