The public health agency published its latest epidemiological score this Thursday, March 23. The Covid-19 epidemic is therefore still following its course, even if the figures remain much less alarming than during previous waves, as reported by our colleagues from Capital. Public Health France nevertheless insists on the importance of vaccination for the most fragile, for whom immunization with new generation vaccines is very strongly recommended.

And for good reason: for 2 consecutive weeks, we have seen an increase in positive cases of Covid-19. The Omicron XBB sub-variant is believed to be the cause. Indeed, it constitutes 70% of all the sequences interpreted as part of the survey carried out at the end of February, aimed at identifying the main strains of the virus in circulation. The BA.5 strain and its BQ.1.1 sub-lineage, which were at the origin of the increase in cases and hospitalizations around the Christmas holidays, have, for their part, decreased significantly.

The results of these surveys must unfortunately be put into perspective: since the end of the reimbursement of tests for vaccinated individuals, it is very likely that certain positive cases will no longer be detected as such by patients and their treating physician. In addition, populations at risk have too low a vaccination rate according to Public Health France, in particular to new generation vaccines, supposed to protect both from the original strain of the virus and from certain sub-lineages of the Omicron variant.

It has been made available to the population at risk since last fall, but only 23.2% of people aged 60-79 and 25.9% of people aged 80 and over would have gone for immunization. The propagation of the XBB sub-variant remains relatively territorialized for the moment. Find below the ranking of the 17 departments in which you must be particularly vigilant.