A terrace in Nice, October 23, 2020. -

SYSPEO / SIPA

The situation vis-à-vis Covid-19 is "difficult, even critical," Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the Scientific Council, estimated on Monday that the curfew should at least be tightened and extended in the face of a second epidemic wave " brutal ".

“We are in a difficult, even critical, situation.

(…) We had expected that there would be this second wave, but we ourselves are surprised by the brutality of what has been happening for 10 days, ”Professor Delfraissy declared on RTL.

"The second wave will probably be stronger than the first", he feared, noting that "many of our fellow citizens have not yet realized what awaits us".

Twice as many cases than expected

He estimated that the real number of cases should be "around 100,000 per day", while confirmed cases have reached record numbers in recent days, surpassing the 50,000 mark in 24 hours on Sunday for the first time since the start of the massive testing.

According to him, there are "two hypotheses" to try to curb this second wave.

The first is "to move towards a more massive curfew, both in its schedules, in its scope at the level of the national territory, and which can also be implemented at weekends".

After "10 to 15 days (...) we could look at the curve of new contaminations (...) and if we are not in the right direction, go towards containment".

Containment revisited

The second hypothesis is "to go directly towards confinement, less hard than that of March, which allows both work, which obviously would increase in terms of teleworking, which would probably make it possible to maintain a school activity and which would also allow a certain number of economic activities to be retained, which could be of shorter duration and which would be followed by very specific deconfinement conditions, since we would deconfin by going through a curfew ”.

"The faster we take measures, the more (they) will have a certain form of efficiency," he insisted, while stressing that the Scientific Council, responsible for enlightening the choices of the executive, "does not recommend nothing, we are putting on the table the two major strategies that are possible ”.

These are "eminently political decisions", he noted.

"This wave is invading Europe (...) it will last several weeks, even one or two months", he continued, while refusing to comment on the situation during the end of the season. of the year: "We'll see for the Christmas holidays".

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