Coronavirus: in France, calls for vigilance are increasing, should we be worried?

Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Jean Castex wanted to be very firm, announcing new measures such as the extension of the mask outside or the ban until the end of October of gatherings of more than 5,000 people in France. This Wednesday, it was the Paris marathon, which was postponed to November, which was canceled. So why such alerts?

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According to figures published by the Directorate General of Health (DGS), the number of patients in intensive care remains rather stable, like that of the number of deaths. On the other hand, the number of positive cases is climbing.

Data analyzed for RFI Patrick Berche, professor emeritus of microbiology at the University of Paris. "  Which means that young people are currently infected with the disease, probably rarely get sick and recover most of the time. There are a lot of healthy carriers, which is not good. It also means that the elderly are taking more precautions. So there may be a low noise spread of the epidemic as we are currently seeing in Italy, for example.  "

But it is still impossible to accurately predict the evolution of the situation because one of the greatest mysteries of this virus is its immunity. Two out of three immune types go undetected. We cannot therefore know the precise immune status of a former patient, nor the collective immunity of a population.

“  It's an unknown factor that calls into question the amplitude of a potential second wave. If we have poor collective immunity, it can be important depending on people's behavior, and I am speaking for France, there.  "

Faced with this unknown factor, Professor Berche can only advise prevention . But also the pedagogy: he reminds that even young people can suffer from complications, even die from this disease.

► To read also: Coronavirus: the situation in France is going "in the wrong direction", says Jean Castex

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