Field hospital in Mulhouse during the first wave, illustration -

MORGAN DURAND / ARMEE DE TE / SIPA

  • There was Mulhouse and the evangelical gathering of the first wave, the intensity of the second, and now the Moselle with the circulation of South African and Brazilian variants.

  • With each wave of coronavirus in France, the Grand-Est seems particularly affected, presenting the most worrying situation.

  • How to explain it?

The circulation of South African and Brazilian variants in Moselle and the high incidence of the department (290.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, against 201.2 national average) put the spotlight on the Grand-Est.

A region that was already the epicenter of the first wave of the coronavirus and had experienced an outbreak at the start of the second wave, between October and December.

Even after the deconfinement of December 15, the virus circulated there more massively than elsewhere, so much so that the eastern departments were the first to experience the curfew at 6 p.m., two weeks before the whole country.

Three outbreaks of the coronavirus, and each time, the Grand-Est seems to be paying a heavier price than the other regions.

The "bad luck" hypothesis should not be excluded.

During the first wave in particular, the east was the epicenter not because of specific weather, geographic or population conditions, but because an evangelical gathering with infected people took place in Mulhouse, becoming a mega cluster .

“And that could have happened anywhere.

This cluster would have impacted any region, ”insists Dr. Hélène Rossinot, a public health specialist.

A fortiori during the first wave, with few masks, few tests and little knowledge of the treatments.

Moreover, it is not excluded that the impact of the Moselle currently is also due to only one or two clusters.

Cold as an explanation?

But whether this happens three times in a row raises questions.

And several hypotheses could partly explain it.

The first is the best known, that of temperatures.

On December 10, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, evoked “the climatic factor, the cold and the humidity” as an explanation for the stopping of the drop in cases in France.

But also the very marked difference, at the time, between the west of the country and the east, which was already experiencing a drop in temperatures.

"Cold and humidity not only promote the stagnation of the virus in the air, the fragility of the immune system, but also risky behavior: we see ourselves more indoors, we go out less and we ventilate the rooms less", informs Hélène Rossinot.

And it will not have escaped you, it is on average colder in the year in the Grand-Est than in the rest of the country.

“But that cannot be the only explanation, immediately tempers epidemiology researcher Michaël Rochoy.

Otherwise Iceland would have a death record.

The cold can be an aggravating factor, but not the only one.

"

Fatal frontiers

Another avenue to explore is that of geography.

"The Luxembourg-Thionville-Metz-Nancy axis is the second European corridor, where more than 200,000 vehicles pass in one direction and the other every day", explains the mayor of Thionville on BFM.

And for Hélène Rossinot, beyond the Grand-Est, "the entire French incidence map shows that cross-border areas are the most affected", like the PACA, for example.

The Grand-Est also has no luck in terms of direct neighbors with Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg.

That is to say Nations that have suffered strong epidemic waves.

“Not all countries have the same restrictions, which can increase the spread of the virus,” notes Michaël Rochoy.

Thus, in the middle of the second French confinement, Luxembourg or German restaurants and bars were open.

Speaking of measures, the Grand-Est would also suffer from executive disinterest.

Thus, the calls of the mayor of Metz to close the schools of the city remain for the moment dead letters.

"If the situation were the same in Paris or Marseille, we can think that measures would be taken much earlier and much more strongly," said Michaël Rochoy.

In Marseille, very strong measures had been decreed with the closure of bars, sports halls and restaurants in September, as in Paris.

"Strong measures are slow to arrive in the Grand-Est, which may explain why the epidemic is spreading so much: it is never stopped at the right time, we expect it to get worse throughout the country," notes the epidemiologist .

A region more exposed… in the media?

However, is our vision not biased?

The maximum incidence in France is not visible in the Grand-Est, but in PACA, with a circulation of the virus of 359 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Dunkirk and Gravelines, in the North, are also experiencing worrying developments, with an alarming number of British variants.

The situation in Ile-de-France also continues to worsen.

Hélène Rossinot concludes: “There is a media focus on the Grand-Est due to the trauma of the first wave, but it would be wrong to think that this is the only region to suffer severely from the virus.

"

For Michaël Rochoy, even the incidence results can suffer from bias: "Due to the impact of the first wave, the population is perhaps no longer tested for the slightest symptom", which would increase the positivity rate.

Because in the Grand-Est, the coronavirus is in everyone's mind.

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