UPDATE BY SITUATION – New measures, new reports and highlights: Le Figaro takes stock of the latest developments in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Epidemic rebound in France, Israel, which discovers a new variant, Pfizer asks the United States to allow a second booster dose … This Wednesday, March 16, Le Figaro sums up the latest information related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Read the fileCovid-19: The Coronavirus Pandemic in Numbers and Infographics
20,757 patients hospitalized in France
According to France’s latest public health report, 145 people have died from Covid this Wednesday. The burden on hospitals continues to decline. There are currently 20,757 hospitalized patients (up from 20,918 on Tuesday), including 1,313 who arrived in the last 24 hours. There are 1,728 patients being treated in intensive care units, up from 1,783 the day before. Over the past day, 108,832 new cases have been detected against 116,618 a day earlier.
Also read: Is Covid-19 ‘twice as deadly’ as the flu?
Olivier Veran defends lifting restrictions despite epidemic recovery
On Monday, France lifted most of the restrictions imposed against COVID-19. But the long fifth wave of the epidemic, which has been declining for several weeks, has been on the rise for several days with re-infection. Health authorities identified more than 116,000 cases in 24 hours (up from 80,000 two weeks ago), according to data released Tuesday. “Yes, we made the right decision,” said Olivier Veran in an interview with Franceinfo. “We knew there was a risk of rebound, we see it, and he’s not only French.”
“It is important to understand what the Scientific Council and the models of the Pasteur Institute are telling us, that indeed, it will grow within 10-15 days, perhaps until the end of March. We risk reaching 120-150 thousand infections per day, and then we expect a decrease,” the minister added. “The most important thing is that the load on hospitals (…) will be limited,” he said. According to him, “there is no risk of overcrowding of hospitals.”
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WHO concerned about resurgence of Covid cases
“Over the past week, we have seen an increase of 8% in detected cases, while more than 11 million cases have been registered with WHO, and this despite a significant reduction in testing worldwide,” WHO expert Maria Van Kerkhove said at a press conference. Whoever has been in charge of fighting Covid-19 at the WHO since it emerged in late 2019 believes the surge in cases is the result of a “combination of factors.” The wave of infections is largely fueled by Omicron’s BA.2 sub-variant, which is already supplanting its BA.1 sibling in some countries. Without a doubt, BA.2 “is the most infectious variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that we have seen so far,” insisted Maria Van Kerkhove. Added to this is the lifting of public health measures taken against Covid in many countries, which gives the virus an “opportunity to spread”, as well as incomplete vaccination coverage in many regions of the world.
Read also“This pandemic is far from over,” warns WHO
Israel says it has discovered a variantunknown » combination of BA.1 and BA.2
The Israeli Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday that it had detected two cases of infection with an unidentified variant of the coronavirus with no apparent severity, which combines sub-variants BA.1 and BA.2. “This variant is not yet known to the world, and two cases were detected through PCR tests performed at Ben Gurion Airport upon entry into Israel,” the ministry said in a statement. “Infected people showed mild symptoms of fever, headaches and muscle pain and did not require any special medical attention,” he continues.
For the head of the Israeli government’s anti-covid strategy, Salman Zarki, “the phenomenon of combined options is well known” and “at this stage we are not worried (that the new option could lead to serious cases”), he told the Israelis. Army radio. As the number of virus infections rises again around the world, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett plans to meet with health ministry officials on Wednesday, his office said.
Read alsoDeltacron variant discovered in France
The second booster dose is ineffective in young people.
According to an Israeli study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, a second booster dose of current messenger RNA vaccines may have only “minor benefit” against Covid-19 infections in healthy young adults. The study involves approximately 600 healthcare workers at Sheba Medical Center, 270 of whom received a second booster dose of Pfizer or Moderna serum four months after receiving their third dose. The rest received only three doses of Pfizer. In general, the fourth dose is considered safe and reduces the level of neutralizing antibodies that block the infection of cells with coronavirus to the level after the third dose.
However, a study that was conducted when the Omicron variant was widely circulating in Israel suggests that the fourth dose provides little additional protection against infection, despite a gradual decrease in antibody levels in those who received three doses. A fourth dose of Pfizer reduces the risk of contracting Covid-19 by 30% compared to three doses, while Moderna reduces those chances by 18%.
Read alsoIn Israel, a questionable rate for the fourth dose
China wants to free up beds due to Omicron surge
On Wednesday, China struggled to free up hospital beds to save hospitals from possible overwhelm by an outbreak of Omicron cases that has already locked down tens of millions of people. The Ministry of Health has reported 3,290 new cases of Covid-19, including 11 serious ones, in 20 provinces. This is a significant drop since Tuesday. Several confinement decrees have already been put in place, notably in Jilin province (northeast), where the majority of cases have been detected, and in the tech metropolis of Shenzhen (south), which has a population of 17.5 million. If these numbers are very low compared to many foreign countries, they are high for China, where the authorities are adopting a zero-Covid strategy aimed at limiting the occurrence of new cases as much as possible.
SEE ALSO – Temporary hospital opens in Jilin province as Covid-19 cases rise in China
Pfizer asks US to allow second booster dose
Pfizer and BioNTech announced on Tuesday that they have applied to the US Drug Agency to allow an additional booster dose of their Covid-19 vaccine for people aged 65 and over. The request is based on data coming out of Israel and analyzed at a time when the Omicron variant was circulating on a large scale, the alliance of the US and German companies said in a press release. These data show, according to Pfizer and BioNTech, that “an additional booster dose of the messenger RNA vaccine increases immunogenicity” – the ability to elicit an immune response – “and reduces the rate of confirmed infections and severe illness.” So the companies have requested an emergency use authorization from the FDA, the US drug agency.
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Covid vaccine patents: WTO welcomes first compromise
The WTO said a compromise for relinquishing intellectual property rights to COVID-19 vaccines had been found between four major manufacturing players, calling for other member countries to be persuaded. Noting that the details of the compromise had not yet been fully settled, World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on Wednesday highlighted the “decisive progress” made by the European Union, the United States, India and South Africa “on the abandonment of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property production of vaccines against Covid-19.
“This is a big step forward and this compromise is the result of many hours of long and difficult negotiations,” she said. Hours earlier, Adam Hodge, US Trade Representative spokesman, announced “a compromise that paves the way (…) to a concrete and meaningful outcome.” Stressing, as did some other observers, that consultations on the text, which has not yet been published, are still ongoing.
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Over 6 million dead
The pandemic has officially killed at least 6,041,660 people worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to a report prepared by AFP on Monday at 1100 GMT. The United States is the country with the most deaths (966,380), ahead of Brazil (655,585), India (515,877) and Russia (361,344). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly associated with Covid-19, the losses from the pandemic could be two to three times higher than officially estimated.