Emmanuel Macron during a meeting at the Elysée Palace.
-
ELIOT BLONDET-POOL / SIPA
The third wave of coronavirus is once again putting France up against the wall, between the specter of sorting out patients in hospital and endless health restrictions that risk increasing.
Two days before a decisive health defense council around the Head of State, the virus circulation indicators do not yet show the hoped-for calm.
More and more doctors have called for a new turn of the sanitary screw.
For three months, however, the government seems to be following the recommendations of caregivers less and less.
They urge the government to toughen the measures.
In a column published in the
JDD
this Sunday, around forty doctors sounded the alarm: if the government does not impose more stringent measures, they will have to "sort out the patients".
For several weeks, caregivers have pleaded overwhelmingly for stricter containment, the only solution according to them to stem the third wave of the epidemic.
But the government is turning a deaf ear for now, and this is not the first time.
Back on three months of arm wrestling between the executive and the caregivers.
January, the start of discord
During the first months of the epidemic, the government followed the advice of doctors, and more particularly of the Scientific Council, citing their recommendations to justify their decisions.
But since January, things are not quite the same.
Return at the end of December.
In an opinion issued on December 23, the Scientific Council, which considers "probable" an "uncontrolled resumption of the epidemic" after the end of the year holidays, proposes "a containment in the regions or metropolises at risk, or a confinement developed ”, but also the limitation of interregional travel.
However, the government decides not to follow these recommendations.
On December 29, Olivier Véran rejected the idea of a re-containment, favoring the scenario of a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. from January 2 in the departments where the incidence rate exceeded the threshold of maximum alert.
In mid-January, faced with the arrival of variants, qualified as "second epidemic", the Scientific Council warns: "If we continue without doing anything more, we will find ourselves in a difficult situation in mid-March" , had alerted Jean-François Delfraissy, on January 24, at the microphone of BFMTV, adding: “It will probably be necessary to go towards confinement.
However, the Scientific Council was not the only one to sound the alarm bells.
On January 20, at the microphone of Jean-Jacques Bourdin, Karine Lacombe, head of the infectious diseases department at Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris, predicted “extremely hard” months of March and April, recommending that “more” measures be taken. coercive ”than a simple curfew.
February, yes but no
Nothing works.
Emmanuel Macron decides not to confine the country, preferring to maintain the curfew and strengthen the restrictive measures.
A choice recently assumed by the President of the Republic: "I can tell you: we were right not to confine France at the end of January because there was no explosion. which was provided for by all models, ”explained Emmanuel Macron after the virtual European summit on March 25.
“Macron was so interested in the Covid that he can challenge scientists, ask the question that destabilizes them,” a government adviser told RTL.
"He will end up as an epidemiologist," added a minister to our colleagues.
And history seems to repeat itself every month.
On February 24, the "wise men" again advocated strict confinement, or at least partial, of four weeks.
Without this measure, "the emergence of a variant of the virus will make the control of the epidemic in France even more difficult in the months to come", and we can then "expect the number of hospitalizations quickly exceeds that observed during the first wave of the pandemic, ”the Scientific Council wrote in this opinion.
At the end of February, the government changed its strategy and decided to locally confine Nice, the coast of the Alpes-Maritimes and the agglomeration of Dunkirk (North), on weekends, for four weeks.
On March 18, the executive extended these measures - however more flexible than during the strict containment of spring 2020 or than last November - to Ile-de-France, Hauts-de-France, Seine-Maritime and the Eure.
Despite this, the figures continue to grow: nearly 4,900 patients are currently in intensive care.
The peak of the second wave is almost reached and could even be exceeded in the coming hours.
March, a pending opinion
In a column published Sunday in the
JDD
, 41 resuscitators and emergency physicians
Ile-de-France are sounding the alarm.
If nothing is done, they estimate that the hospital care capacities will be exceeded within 15 days and they could then be forced to sort the patients.
In a second column, published this time in
Le Monde
, a group of nine doctors from the AP-HP asks the executive "to assume its strategy in front of society as a whole" in the face of the third wave.
“In the absence of sudden braking created by real confinement accompanied by collective awareness, health professionals are faced with a major problem: how to prevent the complete saturation of intensive care services in the days or weeks that are coming ?
They write.
Faced with repeated calls from caregivers, the executive nevertheless ensures that "nothing has been decided" on new restrictions.
Even if the government qualifies as "critical" the health situation, Emmanuel Macron certifies that he is waiting for new data to decide or not on an additional turn of the screw, he told the
JDD on
Sunday.
Faced with pressure from doctors and the epidemic outbreak, will the government toughen up the measures?
The answer should be known at the end of the week, after the defense council to be held on Wednesday.
Health
Coronavirus: So where has the Scientific Council gone?
Politics
Coronavirus: Between Emmanuel Macron and the Scientific Council, a year of ambiguous relations
Emmanuel Macron
Doctor
Video
Government
Coronavirus
Covid 19