The Parisians took advantage of the warm weather this weekend.
Is this one of the last before a possible partial reconfinement?
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Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP
In Ile-de-France, the incidence of the epidemic is 280 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and reached 317 cases in Seine-Saint-Denis.
70% of the resuscitation beds in the region are occupied by patients affected by Covid-19.
According to the government, the next few days will be decisive.
Who's next ?
While less than a week apart, the Nice region and Dunkirk were reconfigured over the weekend, the question is now on everyone's lips.
And all eyes are on Ile-de-France.
If the incidence of the epidemic is still far from the critical thresholds noted in these two agglomerations - respectively 750 and 900 cases per 100,000 inhabitants - it continues to increase.
There are currently an average of 280 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the Ile-de-France region.
Against 222 at the beginning of the month.
And in three departments - Paris, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne - the incidence is greater than 300.
They would only be abstract numbers if they did not have an immediate impact on the health care system.
Now, 70% of some 1,200 intensive care beds are occupied by patients who have contracted Covid-19.
"We have been full for several weeks already and as soon as a bed becomes available, it is reassigned in the hours that follow", insists Professor Djillali Annane, head of the intensive care unit of the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches, in the Hauts-de-Seine.
If he does not note any change in the profiles of the patients who join his service - the average age is around 60 years - he says that now the majority of them are infected with the English variant.
"We have had a few cases of the South African variant, but this remains a very small minority," he explains.
An increase difficult to analyze
Does this mean that everything is already over, that confinement in Ile-de-France is inevitable?
For now, the government recognizes that six of the eight departments in the region (with the exception of Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines, below the threshold of 250 cases per 100,000) are under close surveillance but says that no decision was not taken.
"The next few days will be crucial, even decisive," nevertheless acknowledged Wednesday the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, traveling to Dunkirk.
One of the main difficulties is to analyze the causes of this epidemic resurgence.
Is it directly linked to the British variant, more contagious than the original source, and now predominant in Ile-de-France?
Or the weather situation in recent weeks and in particular the intense cold wave in mid-February?
Since the start of the epidemic, some scientists have emphasized a correlation between the outbreak of the epidemic and the weather: when temperatures are negative, people tend to find themselves indoors and room ventilation is less.
“Both were able to play, but in what proportion?
"Asks a health source, saying that it is for the time being" too early to draw conclusions.
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Strategy to follow
Many questions remain unanswered, in particular on the strategy to be implemented.
Will the government wait "until the last moment", for the incidence rate to reach peaks, to refine it, hoping by then for an inflection of the curves?
Some indicators, like the R0, that is to say the rate of reproduction of the virus, have been declining for a few weeks (it is now 1, which means that an infected person infects another so the epidemic is stable).
The presence of the virus in the region's wastewater will also be scrutinized: this indicator makes it possible to detect the evolution of the epidemic with a head start because whether one is asymptomatic or has not yet pushed through the doors of a laboratory to be tested, traces of the virus are evacuated through urine or stool.
Tuesday, on France Inter, Yvon Maday, professor at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle and member of the Obépine network which examines these indicators, indicated that the Ile-de-France data were "stable" but at high levels.
Some, like Professor Djillali Annane, are however calling for immediate and national measures.
“The sooner and harder we confine, the shorter we confine,” he insists.
The resuscitator pleads for a "zero-covid" strategy, like what has been implemented in Australia and New Zealand: eradicate the virus by establishing a containment similar to that of the month of March then confine locally in lesser case.
"This is the only way to find a normal life," he says.
This strategy does not seem, in any case, to be popular with the government.
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