Even if the contaminations exploded in January, should the health authorities thank Omicron for having taken the place of the Delta variant? The question is asked when the situation remained stable on Sunday in the critical care services which receive patients with Covid-19.
According to official figures released Sunday evening, these services have 3,852 seriously ill with Covid-19, as the day before, against 3,895 Friday and 3,939 Thursday. On the other hand, the total number of hospitalized patients continues to rise (24,887, against 24,544 on Saturday).
Scientists at the conjecture stage
Conversely, the number of new cases of contamination identified decreased over the week, with 278,129, against 296,097 the previous Sunday. On average, over the last seven days, there have been 294,452 daily cases against 313,252 the previous Sunday.
It is too early to draw conclusions from the observed numbers in critical care but, if these statistics are confirmed, they could be related to the characteristics of Omicron. This variant is indeed more transmissible than its predecessor Delta, but also seems to cause fewer serious forms of the disease. Scientists do not know, however, to what extent this is related to the characteristics of the variant or to the fact that the population is already partially immune by vaccination or previous infections.
Specialists, however, consider it possible that Omicron saturates less resuscitation since it causes less serious forms, while weighing heavily on hospital beds in general.
In the field of vaccination, 53.6 million people have received at least one injection (i.e. 79.5% of the total population) and 52.3 million now have a complete vaccination schedule (i.e. 77.5% of the population total). 31.7 million people received a booster dose. Finally, the total number of deaths stands at 126,967 since the start of the epidemic.