The upward trend is shared by our major European neighbors: Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK all register increased incidence 238483065/sudok1 – stock.adobe.com
In just over a month, transmissions have accelerated and new cases of Covid now affect 1.1% of the French population.
And 7. The new wave of Covid-19 – that is, the seventh in France – has become undeniable. The culprit is the BA.5 variant, whose relentless advance over its BA.2 ancestor benefits from both an immune escape (immunity acquired through vaccination or through previous infection is only partially effective) and a greater risk of contagion.
This seventh wave started in France at the end of May, followed by South Africa and Portugal. In just over a month, transmissions have accelerated so much that new cases of Covid now affect 1.1% of the French population. Young adults are particularly affected, with an incidence of 1,500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the 20 to 39 year olds, about twice as much as in the over 80 year olds. Those under 19 are more likely to be spared (400 cases per 100,000 population among 0-9 year olds, 600 among 10-19 year olds) but one can imagine they are also screened less than their elders. More broadly, “the number of cases is probably underestimated due to a certain fatigue with the explanation of the various actors,” estimated the Covid-19 Scientific Council in a statement published on June 23.
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Around us, the upward momentum is shared by our main European neighbors: Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are all recording increases in incidence… But it is still France that is showing the strongest epidemic growth. According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), eighteen of the thirty-three European countries monitored have seen an increase in their hospitalizations and/or intensive care admissions for Covid over the past two weeks. Only Portugal, because it was among the first to be hit, is already seeing the wave back.
“Fragility of human resources in the hospital”
However, for a few days now, experts have noted the first signs of a slowdown in the emergence of new cases in France. Can we conclude that we are nearing the peak of this seventh wave? Without scientific models that satisfactorily reflect an increasingly complex reality with a largely immunized but very diverse population (vaccination and/or infection, delta, omicron or alpha strains, etc.), it is difficult to draw any conclusions. “What we can say is that without a prevention policy, the new BA.5 wave will cause at least millions of infections, thousands of hospitalizations, hundreds of deaths and an unknown number of long covids,” summarizes Samuel Alizon, research director at CNRS and member of the infectious disease modeling team in Montpellier.
The only projections available are those of Simon Cauchemez, leader of the modeling teams at the Pasteur Institute. By July 18, they project about 1,700 daily hospital admissions on that horizon, up from a thousand currently. In critical care, that would increase admissions to about 160 per day, where they are currently around 100.
A perspective that hospitals welcome in different ways. “We are both calm and concerned,” explains Professor Djillali Annane, Head of Intensive Care at Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Garches (AP-HP), President of the Union of Intensive Care Doctors. Calm because we now know how to take care of these patients: we have a therapeutic arsenal and know-how, and the Covid no longer catches us unprepared. But we are also concerned about the fragility of our human resources in the hospital. In my service, six beds out of fifteen are closed due to staff shortages. When the wave rises too much, we become overwhelmed because we are not enough and have no leeway. Not to mention that our exhausted teams, like everyone else, need time off if they don’t get sick themselves. For Professor Annane, it’s not too late to break the wave “by returning to mandatory masks in transport and community workplaces. It’s not that restrictive and we know it’s effective.”