After Nice and Dunkirk, will the government persevere in its strategy of local containment against Covid-19?

This is one of the questions that Prime Minister Jean Castex and Minister of Health Oliver Véran should answer, during a press conference on Thursday, February 25 at 6 p.m.

Faced with a health situation deemed "worrying" in ten departments, the government must announce new consultations with local elected officials.

According to Matignon, the question of treatment against Covid-19 will also be addressed.

The government has already mentioned the track of monoclonal antibodies, supposed to support the immune system to neutralize the coronavirus.

In addition to the Alpes-Maritimes and the North, eleven metropolitan departments have experienced an incidence rate of over 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last seven days, above the maximum alert threshold defined by the government, in the Hauts- de-France, Ile-de-France and the Grand Est, regions confronted with greater proportions of British, South African or Brazilian variants of the virus.

Among these departments is the Moselle, where the government announced that negative PCR tests of less than 72 hours would be required from Monday morning for cross-border workers returning from Germany without professional reasons.

For non-border workers, this test is already required for any entry into France from an EU country.

"The situation is deteriorating"

"I am not asking to reconfine the Moselle", where the question had already arisen two weeks ago in the face of an increase in the South African variant, nevertheless declared on France Inter the president of the Grand Est region, Jean Rottner , judging the situation "relatively stable".

But "what is worrying on the scale of the Grand Est is that the decline in viral circulation has stopped, so I think that in two to three weeks, the questions will be asked in a different way", a- he added.

At the national level, Public Health France announced on Wednesday that it had recorded more than 31,519 positive cases in 24 hours, a figure to be taken with caution because it can include catch-ups of cases detected the previous days, but at the highest since mid-November.

According to more consolidated data, there were 138,771 people tested positive last week, up from 128,662 the previous week.

"The epidemic situation is deteriorating in our country", deplored the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, in Dunkirk on Wednesday, stressing that "the number of diagnoses is now increasing day by day".

If contaminations start to rise again, it will be in a context where the hospital burden is already high, with still more than 25,000 hospitalized patients (against more than 33,000 and 32,000 at the peaks of the second and first wave), including more than 3,400 in intensive care units, where the most seriously ill patients are treated.

Decline in nursing home deaths

The number of patients in intensive care remains far from the records of autumn (4,900) and spring (7,000), but the progression of vaccination in France will not be sufficient to avoid a jump in hospitalizations to a level above the peak of the first wave, without additional restrictions, warn the modelers of the Pasteur Institute in a study published Wednesday.

This rebound would be linked in particular to the progression of the variant of British origin of the coronavirus, estimated 50% more contagious than the historical strain.

Thursday, the vaccine campaign began a new phase with the possibility for town doctors to inject one of the three antidotes authorized in France, that of AstraZeneca, for 50-64 year olds with comorbidities, i.e. 2 million people.

"I was patient but I was also a little impatient because I am a person at risk (...) When the good weather returns, there will be many candidates for the vaccine, believe me!", Assured the one of Olivier Véran's patients, visiting with Jean

Castex

in a nursing home in the 20th arrondissement of Paris where the first injections took place.

In nursing homes, the campaign's priority target, the vaccination coverage rate with two doses has now reached 50% (80% for the first dose) and the number of deaths, recorded twice a week, has dropped significantly, with 121 deaths. Tuesday (against 235 a week earlier), but the health authorities remain cautious and do not yet establish a certain link with the protection due to the vaccine.

A total of 2.6 million people received at least one dose, of which 1.3 million people were vaccinated with both doses.

With AFP

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