Is the eighth wave of Covid-19 really over? It circulated in France without making a sound, or else it’s because the French have been disinterested in it for months now… With the total end of the restrictions last spring, the government has buried the epidemic, after two years of wearing a mask, rubbing your hands with hydro-alcoholic gel or no longer kissing each other. When summer arrived, contaminations, hospitalizations and deaths were just a very bad memory… Who was reminded of us at the start of the school year in September.

The number of new cases was increasing every day, with an incidence rate that exceeded 800 per 100,000 inhabitants in some departments. Then, suddenly, the curve reversed, somewhat by surprise, from the middle of October after the peak of contamination. Should we expect a ninth wave faster than expected? On this subject, scientists see vagueness. Asked by Le Parisien, virologist Yannick Simonin explains: “We have never been so foggy as now”.

Will a new variant cause infections to start again in the coming weeks? Will the virus circulate quietly like in recent weeks? The number of positive cases is dropping by around 30% each week, as are hospital admissions. We are still not immune to a slightly less optimistic scenario, according to Public Health France and the Pasteur Institute. In their latest risk analysis, published Friday, October 27 and quoted by the daily, they explain: “A more competitive variant (whether through greater transmissibility or increased escape from the immune response) can influence epidemic dynamics, but only if the difference from previously circulating variants is large enough”.

Another point could also complicate the coming weeks: wearing a mask. For the moment, it is simply “recommended” in densely frequented and poorly ventilated closed places, such as public transport or shopping centers. A request that is not really listened to, since very few French people again wear their mask on their nose… In these departments, the situation is however far from idyllic, because the incidence rate there is still very high, at more than 500 per 100,000 inhabitants. Find out which ones below.