Covid-19 and eighth wave: 66 departments on maximum alert

Soon the eighth wave? Although this seems to be on the horizon, there would currently be a lull before the storm… “On the eve of the start of the school year, the circulation of SARS-Cov-2 continued to decrease, accompanied by a drop in admissions to the hospital at the national level.” indicates the Public Health website.

Nevertheless, the incidence rate in a large part of the metropolis remains well above the alert threshold provided by the government, set at 150 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. It is the BA.5 sub-variant that happens to be the cause of most contamination, with 95% of sequencing.

Thus, the president of the Health Risk Anticipation Committee, Professor Brigitte Autran, declared in August: “It is almost certain that there will be a wave in the fall”, reports the media 20 Minutes. “What we don’t know is how big it will be.”

As for the Minister of Health, François Braun, he commented: “it will restart and there will be a vaccination campaign which will resume in the fall”. Because for the moment, only 32.6% of people aged 60 to 79, 46.2% of people aged 80 and over and 50.8% of residents of nursing homes have received a second booster dose of vaccination.

If the decline is still underway, however, we must remain vigilant. In the slideshow below, Planet has compiled the list of departments still having incidence rates above the maximum alert threshold.

This is defined as the number of people infected per 100,000 inhabitants. It is based on data collected on Covid Tracker, for the week of September 1, 2022.