The so-called South African variant is rapidly gaining ground.

The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, indicated on Tuesday April 27 that this variant of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus was spreading more and more in Île-de-France. 

"For a long week now, there has been an increase in the proportion of the South African variant, especially in the inner suburbs of Paris, which represented 6% of diagnoses and which now represents 10%", he announced on the sidelines of a visit to the crisis center of the Ile-de-France Regional Health Agency (ARS) in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis). 

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Covid-19: three variants under close surveillance in France

On the other hand, no case of contamination by the so-called Indian variant has so far been detected in metropolitan France, he said.

Indian variant: Olivier Véran ensures that "no case has been identified" in metropolitan France https://t.co/Dw8LeNcNQ2 pic.twitter.com/MFTiHB0LUE

- BFMTV (@BFMTV) April 27, 2021

Minority variants  

The question of the circulation of variants, to which Olivier Véran devoted his trip on Tuesday, is still worrying.

Thus, the National Union of Airline Pilots (SNPL) of Air France called on the company's pilots not vaccinated against Covid-19 to refuse flights to India, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina and Chile. 

The share of Brazilian and South African variants, feared for their greater contagiousness and suspected of being more resistant to vaccines, remains very small in France (4.2% of suspicion of these variants in new cases), but their share has suddenly increased in Île-de-France, from 6 to 9% in a few days. 

Regarding vaccination, France should exceed the symbolic bar of 20 million injections (first and second doses combined) on Tuesday, but the coverage rate remains insufficient to consider an exit from the health crisis: Monday, 27% of the adult population had received a first dose of vaccine, and 10.8% of this population was vaccinated with two doses. 

With AFP

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