Paris (AFP)

On the second day of the vaccination campaign for those over 75 years old in the city, for which the government has promised transparency, France remains under the threat of the British variant of Covid-19, more contagious, which keeps the return a little further to normal life.

This lasting deviation from normality is symbolized by spectacular figures published on Tuesday morning: the Covid-19 epidemic in France led to a drop in life expectancy at birth of almost five months for women (85.2 years ) and six months for men (79.2), according to INSEE's 2020 demographic report.

On Wednesday, it is the ski resorts that risk seeing their hopes of restarting the ski lifts this winter melt like snow in the sun, after having had to leave them closed during the Christmas holidays.

"If we miss the February holidays (spread from February 6 to March 1), it is a dark season" which promises to be, warns Jean-Luc Boch, president of the National Association of Mayors of Mountain Resorts (ANMSM ).

"We will have breakage," he warned.

Because France remains on a high plateau of contaminations and hospital admissions of patients affected by Covid-19, and the threat of the spread of the "VOC 202012/01" variant, which has overwhelmed the British health system , materializes.

According to Inserm projections, this variant could become "dominant in France between late February and mid-March".

- Masks -

"New weekly hospitalizations should reach the level of the peak of the first wave (about 25,000 per week) between mid-February and early April, in the absence of interventions," add the authors of the study, who do not measure again the effects of the curfew advanced to 6 p.m. for all of France since Saturday.

A measure that has been added to the closure of bars, restaurants and cultural places, in force since the end of October, and with no prospect of reopening immediately.

For his part, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, clarified the doctrine on masks, after new recommendations from the High Council of Public Health (HCSP), dictated precisely by the threat of the English variant.

"Almost all industrial masks", what "we call masks for the general public of level 1", remains valid, declared on France Inter the minister who on the other hand called to avoid "the artisanal mask which one manufactures at home with the best intention in the world ".

If the minister noted "a curfew effect" in the 15 departments where it came into force earlier, since January 2, hospital admissions immediately experience a slight upturn, with 1,666 arrivals on Monday, against 1,289 the previous Monday, for a total of 25,584 hospitalized Covid-19 patients (against 24,263 on January 1).

The number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care has returned to above 2,800, while it had stabilized around 2,600 since the end of December.

- Transparency -

In this context, vaccination, which started on Monday for those over 75, is becoming more and more crucial.

But day 1 of the general public campaign was marked on Monday by critics of local elected officials, unhappy with the too few doses that had arrived in their vaccination centers.

To answer it, Olivier Véran promised "to publish in full transparency the precise number of doses which each vaccination center - there are more than 900 - has".

A request made to him by Emmanuel Macron, he said.

Objective, to show the population "that there are no hidden stocks", insisted Olivier Véran, after the questions raised in particular by the mayor PS of Lille, Martine Aubry.

As of Monday evening, nearly 480,000 people had received their first injection of the vaccine, while France received a total of 1.6 million doses.

But "at the national level we have 8,000 doses in stock, the rest is fully deployed in the territories and vaccination centers", assured the minister.

© 2021 AFP