Olivier Véran at the National Assembly, April 1, 2021. -

Jacques Witt / SIPA

  • During his visit to France Inter on April 1, Olivier Véran invited the French to promote teleworking to curb the spread of Covid-19. 

  • "We think, we consider that 40% of the success of a confinement is teleworking," he said on this occasion.

  • Contacted by

    20 Minutes

    to find out more about the origin of this figure, the office of the Minister of Health did not respond to our requests.

    If several studies underline the health interest of teleworking, they do not advance this statistic.

This has been the government's watchword for more than a year, given to companies and employees (failing to be able to impose them): promote teleworking as soon as possible to avoid the spread of Covid-19.

Emmanuel Macron repeated it again on Wednesday when announcing a third national confinement.

And the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, did not fail to promote the health interest of such a practice the very next day, at the microphone of France Inter: “Anyone who can telework must telework.

[…] We think, we consider that 40% of the success of a confinement is teleworking.

"

. @ olivierveran: "40% of the success of confinement is teleworking" #Covid # le79Inter pic.twitter.com/o2s6KflVYS

- France Inter (@franceinter) April 1, 2021

" It is enormous !

Teleworking has a huge impact!

So the more you earn on teleworking, the more you earn against the virus and the shorter the management measures, and the faster we reopen bars and restaurants, etc. ”, he continued.

Without specifying what data he was relying on to advance such a percentage.

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Contacted multiple times by

20 Minutes

, the minister's office did not respond to our requests to learn more about the source of this statistic.

In France, to date, the only result approaching such a percentage appears in the ComCor study carried out by the Pasteur institute in partnership with the Caisse Nationale d'Assurance Maladie, the Ipsos institute and Public Health France.

Carried out between October 1, 2020 and January 31, 2021 with more than 77,000 people suffering from an “acute infection” with Covid-19, it made it possible to establish the main places of contamination with the virus ... and to assess the scope remote work: "Teleworking protects (-24% for partial telework, -30% for total telework compared to people doing the same work in an office)",

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, the Pasteur Institute specifies, however, that “the ComCor study indicates that a person who is teleworking has a reduced risk of 30% of being infected compared to a person doing the same job face-to-face in an office.

"And the institute to add:" The figure like what "40% of the success of the confinement, it is the teleworking", does not come from the study ComCor, [this one] does not give an estimate of the share attributable to the success of the confinement to teleworking.

"

A limited risk of infection at home ... except in large homes

This figure does not appear in recent English studies on the effects of confinement either.

In this perspective, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, an American think tank, on the other hand underlined an interesting fact in a recent publication: “The result showing that the larger [family] households tend to decrease the efficiency of the decrease in the number of reductions is a new datum to the empirical perspective [on the subject].

That being said, it is evident that larger outbreaks involve a greater number of contacts in total which can contribute to the spread of the disease within the family.

"

Figures consistent with those of the survey conducted in France by the Union of General Practitioners (MG France) conducted between November and December.

To the question "where is it most likely that your Covid + patient has become infected?"

», The 851 physicians questioned mentioned 36.08% the family environment and 16.59% work.

What reminds us that if teleworking makes it possible to avoid daily contacts in a company, it remains the most effective when all the people of the same household use it - assuming that the latter also avoid any “risky” meeting. with outsiders.

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  • Health

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  • Covid 19

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  • Olivier Véran

  • Teleworking