Renaud Piarroux saw the second wave coming at the latest when the number of infections rose slowly but steadily at the beginning of July.
He is also now warning of a third wave of infections: "We have to prepare for a third wave and hope that it does not occur," says Piarroux, head of the Parasitology and Mycology Laboratory at La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.
With its 90 buildings spread over 33 hectares in the heart of Paris, the Pitié-Salpêtrière is the largest hospital in the country.
There, Piarroux experienced the first shock wave of the pandemic and wrote down in the summer what went wrong.
“Die Welle”, “La Vague”, the title of his book, is a relentless but also constructive settlement with French politics and administration.
According to Piarroux, the main mistake was that France did not succeed in breaking chains of infection at an early stage.