PANDEMIC: Invited by LCI, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran was cautious about the rise in infections and tried to reassure the French about vaccines
He didn’t want to get wet. But by acknowledging that the target of a drop to 5,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day would be “difficult” to achieve, the Minister of Health knows that the government faces a dilemma in view of the deconfinement planned from the December 15th. “Everything can be brought to change, to evolve according to the epidemic data”, indicated Olivier Véran on the plate of LCI, Tuesday evening.
It was Emmanuel Macron who announced this threshold: “On December 15, if we have reached around 5,000 contaminations per day and around 2,500 to 3,000 people in intensive care (…) the confinement can be lifted. “Except that after a rapid drop from 50,000 daily cases to 10,000, the contaminations curve is stagnating, or even rising again, with more than 13,000 new cases on Tuesday.
No change for Christmas but nothing guaranteed for New Year
Saying “concerned”, Olivier Véran evoked three scenarios, while recalling that the decision would be taken by the defence council: a lifting of the confinement as planned, maintenance of the measures, or a reduction consolidated by a curfew starting earlier the evening. It is Jean Castex who is due to speak on Thursday, the day after a new defence council.
“Christmas is not the New Year, and we must undoubtedly be even more careful” but “I believe in the common sense and the spirit of responsibility of the French”, assured Véran. According to him, the limit of six adults on Christmas Eve remains a recommendation.
Véran tries to reassure the French about vaccines
Faced with four French people to talk about vaccination, which should start at the end of December, the Minister of Health has become an educator. He assured him, “all the data” from Pfizer and Moderna’s clinical trials will be accessible to the general public once the European Medicines Agency has studied them. He praised the “caution” of Europe, which allowed itself three weeks longer than the United Kingdom to sift through them.
What about the new technique of these messenger RNA-based vaccines? “These are the cells that will make a virus protein, which in itself is harmless. You are not injected with disease, no virus, the vaccine does not enter human DNA, ”guaranteed the Minister in the face of concerns.
