“The mask may have to make a comeback in transport,” said Dr. Jérôme Marty, general practitioner in Fronton (Haute-Garonne) in the columns of La Dépêche, Wednesday June 15.

Indeed, an epidemic recovery is confirmed in France. For several days now, the incidence rate has been skyrocketing in most French departments.

Monday, June 13, the symbolic bar of 30,000 new daily cases was exceeded: the figures had not been so high for more than a month.

The incidence rate has risen above 300 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (it was 322 on June 12), up by more than 50% over the last seven days.

On the hospital side, too, the beginnings of a new wave are beginning to be felt, with a rebound in hospitalizations: the CovidTracker site notes 55 critical care admissions for Covid19 every day, a figure up 22% from compared to last week.

This epidemic resumption would be the cause of an unprecedented spread of the highly contagious subvariants of Omicron, BA.4 and BA.5. The vaccination coverage, although substantial in France where 80% of the inhabitants are now vaccinated, would not be adapted to these mutant sequencings.

Are we on the verge of a new devastating wave? We can fear it. Faced with such a situation, the government could decide to review its strategy in terms of health restrictions. A return of the mask and the pass cannot be ruled out, and the vaccination strategy should be adjusted soon. We are talking in particular about a fourth generalized dose, and a fifth dose at the start of the school year for people at risk.

In these 30 departments, where deaths linked to the virus have increased by up to 400% in one week, it is necessary to prepare for the possibility of an imminent return to the wearing of compulsory masks*.

*According to CovidTracker data on June 16, 2022