While France is lightening its set of anti-Covid measures from this Wednesday, in particular in terms of tracing contact cases and their systematic isolation, specialists are warning about this impression of “end of pandemic”, and regret the clarity of the government messages. Although the indicators are down, a new wave cannot be ruled out.
Three years to the day after describing the disease as a “public health emergency of international concern”, the World Health Organization (WHO) decided on Monday to maintain its maximum level of alert on the Covid-19 pandemic. 19. If the WHO considers that the pandemic “is probably at a point of transition”, it regrets that surveillance and genetic sequencing, which make it possible to follow the evolution of the virus and its movements, have dropped sharply.
Like vaccination, underlines the WHO, whether in poor countries for lack of serums, means and mistrust, or in better off countries where weariness is emerging and where the anti-vax movement has sown doubt.
Abandonment of the “test, trace, isolate” strategy
After the ninth wave at the end of December, the indicators are down in France and the health situation is improving, with less than 16,000 patients currently hospitalized, compared to nearly 25,000 at the end of December. According to the Covid Tracker site, the number of contaminations has also dropped in one month, from more than 20,000 to less than 5,000 per day on average. According to figures from Public Health France, as of January 25, hospitalizations have decreased by 32.6% in seven days, deaths by 31.9% and intensive care admissions by 34.1%.
France even lifts some of the latest restrictive measures this Wednesday. Exceptional work stoppages, without a waiting day for people who test positive for Covid-19, will no longer be possible. The end of the measure, initially planned “at the latest” at the end of 2023, has therefore been brought forward.
Fallen into disuse against a background of falling cases, “systematic isolation” of positive cases and “carrying out a test” after two days for their contacts will no longer be required. Finally, the follow-up of “contact cases”, via the “Covid contact” service managed by Health Insurance, will cease definitively.
“Is it the right time? Hard to say”
Doctors remain cautious. “It’s a calculated bet, a decision in continuity”, comments to BFMTV.com Benjamin Davido, infectious disease specialist at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches, in the Hauts-de-Seine. “Is it the right time? It’s hard to say,” he wonders.
For his part, the epidemiologist and president of the Covid-19 cell of the National Academy of Medicine Yves Buisson considers the decision “perfectly consistent with the current situation”, describing “measures from the start of the pandemic”.
The two specialists agree, however, that the pandemic is far from over. “It is not because we stop following it that the virus is over”, underlines Benjamin Davido, “we have to be very careful when we talk about the end of the pandemic. It may be rather the end of a period”.
An analysis shared by Yves Buisson, who explains that we are “in a transformation of the Covid from the pandemic state to the endemic state”, namely a virus or a disease which settles permanently in a country or a region.
An “ambiguous” message
“The message should be nuanced, it is not a long-term message”, adds Benjamin Davido, who denounces “the ambiguity” of it: the government lightens the anti-Covid device but does not otherwise recall that the virus is still circulating in France. “There is a major element that should have been added: individual isolation with the mask for contagious people,” said the infectious disease specialist.
For epidemiologist and biostatistician Catherine Hill, the debate is quite different. According to her, the tracing has “never worked” anyway.
“Interpreting this cessation of tracing as a reduction in measures, implying that the situation allows this reduction, is absolutely abusive”, she adds to BFMTV.com, stressing that several dozen people continue to die every day. consequences of the Covid. “We are in a hollow but we do not know what will happen” in the future, she explains.
Focus on vaccination
The three specialists all agree on the importance of vaccination, regretting “the hesitant message” on this subject. “We must focus efforts on vaccination, which are not enough,” said Yves Buisson.
“Protection decreases over time”, recalls Catherine Hill, “you have to explain to people to go get vaccinated again if their last dose is more than six months old”. The specialist also asks for a “clearer message on vaccination”. Not all of them rule out the risk of the emergence of a new variant, which could lead to a new wave.
“The virus is everywhere, the successive waves depend on the variants”, details Catherine Hill, who adds that the Covid will never be similar to the flu because “the flu arrives every winter and the virus mutates from one year to another, unlike the Covid which mutates all the time. Yves Buisson assures for his part that “we cannot rule out the risk of the emergence of new variants”.
What then of the future of the pandemic and its impact on us? For infectious disease specialist Benjamin Davido, the answer lies in another question: “What would the government have to do if the cases increased again?”