Illustration of students, here in a school in Castelnau-le-Lez, near Montpellier, in a period of coronavirus (Covid-19).
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J. Diesnis / Maxele Presse Agency
The Scientific Council recommends closing schools only as a "last resort", recommending in a new opinion an "early" and "regional" strategy to curb the Covid-19 epidemic and the saturation of hospital services.
"The closure of schools appears to be an extreme health measure of last resort, as soon as effective health protocols exist", write the members of the Scientific Council, who underline "the very negative impact of school dropout on learning, and it may even be irrecoverable for children from disadvantaged families or in precarious situations ”.
"The threat posed by variants (...) remains very present"
"In the event of a critical health situation, the presence in college and high school can be graduated" and alternated, adds the body, a delegation of which is received Tuesday at the end of the day by Emmanuel Macron.
On the other hand, the Scientific Council considers the "unsatisfactory situation in the professional environment", and pleads for "an attempt to harden" "health protocols, and means dedicated to their respect and effective control, in particular during meals".
The "fear of a peak in hospitalizations greater than that of March 2020"
His opinion was delivered last Thursday to the government, which has not yet made it public, but has been shared on social networks.
After having pleaded in vain at the end of January for a strict confinement of four weeks, the body, created by the government to guide it in the health crisis, considers that "the threat posed by the variants on the epidemic dynamic remains very present".
Assuming 300,000 doses of vaccine injected each day from April 1, but "without further reductions in transmission rates and with the effect of variants, we can expect to see a higher peak in hospitalizations than in March. 2020 ”, notes the Scientific Council in particular, based on models from the Pasteur Institute.
Go towards "an early, regional, adjusted and targeted strategy"
In this context, he favors "an early, regional, adjusted and targeted strategy", but considers "essential that the regional management of the epidemic be extremely reactive and in anticipation" and warns that this strategy is "difficult to sustain in the event of epidemic outbreak in several French regions ”.
"Compared to the wait-and-see approach, early measures make it possible to minimize the epidemic peak and the cumulative number of hospitalizations and deaths" and "the measures could also be lifted more quickly leading to a lower economic impact", insists the body chaired by Jean-François Delfraissy.
On the other hand, "such a strategy can also make it possible to envisage, in territories with a very low transmission rate of the virus, a gradual reduction in the strictest restrictive measures", notes the Scientific Council, which ranks in the category “Low risk” “cultural places including cinemas and theaters”.
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