The Rennes University Hospital is on the front line to welcome patients with the Brittany coronavirus.
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C. Allain / 20 Minutes
Discovered two weeks ago, the Breton variant would have been detected in 13 people, all around the Lannion hospital center.
The analyzes carried out did not reveal any worrying element regarding the contagiousness or severity of the 20C variant.
Brittany is experiencing, like all of France, a deterioration in its indicators.
He was both frightening and the subject of more or less tasteful jokes.
Two weeks after its first identification in the territory of Lannion (Côtes d'Armor), the now famous “Breton variant” does not seem to have spread in the region or elsewhere in France.
According to the director of the Breton Regional Health Agency, only 13 people would be affected, seven of whom have died.
Only six additional cases have been identified through virus sequencing.
They are in addition to the eight cases already identified, of which seven have died (and not eight as previously announced).
According to the ARS, the six new cases recorded are all concentrated in the Lannion region.
Four within the hospital center already affected, one in the population of the area and an inhabitant of Ile-de-France who was quickly identified and explained to have passed through Tregor.
To this must be added 219 “possible and probable” cases which were identified during the “contact tracing” of people passing through the area around Lannion, Morlaix and Guingamp.
"Today there is no indicator suggesting that the Breton variant has diffused in other regions," said director Stéphane Mulliez.
Faced with the press, the authorities did not try to be reassuring about this variant called 20C.
But the first results of the investigations carried out by the Pasteur Institute are rather "good news".
Thus, out of the 330 positive samples from Brittany already analyzed, none showed any trace of the Breton variant.
A little more than 300 other samples must be analyzed and more will arrive from different French regions.
Another reassuring element, Public Health France did not find "any information suggesting that this variant displays resistance to the vaccine", assured the director of the ARS Stéphane Mulliez.
Investigations are continuing into the transmission and potential dangerousness of this variant, which has not yet been classified as "worrying" by the health authorities.
“Seven of the first eight identified cases have died but there is no reason to believe that this variant is more severe.
But the investigations continue ”, assures the director of the ARS.
The flash investigation launched a fortnight ago has so far not made it possible to explain why this “20C” is more difficult to identify by PCR tests.
The trail of a virus that would lodge "deeper in the respiratory tract" is mentioned but is not confirmed.
Relatively spared by the epidemic, Brittany has seen its indicators deteriorate for a month, like all of France.
In one month, the incidence rate has thus increased by 56%, against 50% for the whole of France.
In the Côtes d'Armor, this progression is even 100%, in particular because of the great transmissibility of the English variant, which represents more than 80% of the positive cases recorded in the region.
The Rennes metropolitan area is particularly the subject of special attention with an incidence rate that flirts with 300 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
"The increase is especially significant among 16-35 year olds", specifies the ARS, recalling the strict respect of barrier gestures.
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