A temporary lull? After reaching its peak in the middle of October, the eighth wave of Covid-19 has receded in France, relegating the subject of the health crisis a little more to the background. As Planet explained to you a few days ago, the number of cases was down, as were hospitalizations and critical care admissions. Good news with the arrival of winter and the upcoming drop in temperatures, after a particularly warm autumn.

Despite these encouraging signs, many specialists are calling for caution and the Covars – which replaced the Scientific Council – even recommended that the French continue to wear a mask in closed, busy and poorly ventilated places. It is now the turn of the Minister of Health to raise the subject, in an interview published by Le Parisien this Saturday, November 12. Asked by readers of the daily, François Braun tempers the end of the eighth wave: “Even if the epidemic situation has been rather calm for three weeks, one person still dies from Covid every ten minutes in France!”. “It’s too much and we know that, sooner or later, a new wave could arrive,” he adds.

For the minister, the French must therefore continue to respect certain rules, which have been somewhat forgotten in recent months. “We must continue to isolate ourselves, this rule is not called into question. And we must be vaccinated”, he specifies to the readers of Le Parisien, regretting the weak results of the autumn campaign and its 10% vaccinated only. So what to do? The refrain is always the same on the government side, “barrier gestures and vaccination are our weapons against the Covid, but also the flu or bronchiolitis at the moment”.

By evoking barrier gestures, François Braun is of course thinking of social distancing but above all of wearing a mask, especially in public transport and in crowded places such as shops or supermarkets. If no obligation is currently on the table, the French are called upon to play the game, to protect the most fragile if they do not do it for themselves. In some territories, the number of cases is still high and, above all, it has stopped falling, or even started to increase again. While the Minister of Health mentioned a possible new wave, the evolution of the number of cases is again in the red in these 38 departments, according to data from the CovidTracker site. Find out which ones below.