Will we ever be truly rid of Covid-19? Looking at the latest figures, there is reason to be pessimistic. Indeed, after a relative lull since last March, contaminations have been on the rise since the Ascension weekend.
We were hoping for a summer without restrictions, after two years of masks, health passes and travel restrictions. We may need to revise our expectations.
It is the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, of the Omicron strains, which would be responsible for this brutal rebound. Their virality would have nothing to envy to these predecessors, according to epidemiologists.
“For the past few days, we have already seen a slight increase […] in viral circulation, with, at least for the moment, an absence of hospital impact”, announced Guillaume Spaccaferri, epidemiologist from Public Health France, in a press conference last week.
If for the moment, the situation is not yet critical in hospitals, the latest figures are cause for concern.
According to CovidTracker, contaminations are up 25% as of June 3, with an average of 22,368 new Covid19 positive cases every day.
Nationwide, the incidence rate is 233 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, a “high and rising” figure, according to the site.
And the phenomenon could intensify in the coming days… In our slideshow, discover the 31 departments where the incidence rate is already soaring beyond 200 cases per 100,000 people*.
In this context, some doctors recommend the implementation of a new vaccine booster for the entire population, and a return to wearing a mask in public transport. “We know that the train, the plane and the metro are places of contamination. It would have been more prudent not to remove the obligation to wear a mask until later”, explains in particular Dr. Benjamin Davido in the columns of Ouest France. On the vaccination side, he recommends: “we must both relaunch the call for the most fragile to receive their second booster dose and enter into a logic of regular vaccination, as we do for the flu. The epidemic is not going to stop with a snap of the fingers”.
The epidemiologist also calls on laboratories to develop new vaccines, more suited to the latest variants.
* according to figures from Public Health France on CovidTracker as of June 7, 2022
