EPIDEMIC: “We have an increase in the circulation of the coronavirus of around 150% over a week: we have never known that”, assured the Minister of Health on Tuesday.
The coronavirus continues to spread across the country. The number of coronavirus Covid-19 contaminations over the last 24 hours has climbed to 18,000, against less than 7,000 a week earlier. The Minister of Health Olivier Véran was alarmed on Tuesday, according to whom this increase, due to the Delta variant, is unpublished.
“I have just had the contamination figures for the last 24 hours in our country (…) We were yesterday at 18,000 contaminations over 24 hours only”, assured the minister during the questioning session to the government in the National Assembly. The final figures for the last 24 hours will be published in the evening by Santé publique France.
“We have a weapon, vaccination”
“This means that we have an increase in the circulation of the virus of the order of 150% over a week: we have never experienced this, neither with the Covid [the historical strain of the virus], nor with the English variant, neither with the South African nor with the Brazilian ”, he continued.
Such a level of positive cases had not been observed since mid-May. “We have a weapon, the vaccination,” he pleaded. “The time is no longer for doubt, for hesitation, the time is for collective immunity, it is a collective responsibility and it is the only way we have (…) to get rid of the Covid one once and for all ”.
“If we are at the point where we ask you to set up a Pass sanitaire (health pass), it is because we do not have the time and we have no choice”, had just argued the Minister. just before the law committee of the Assembly, which will examine at the end of the afternoon the bill which notably extends this pass to many places.
“If we start to push it back, we’ll be completely under the wave.”
While several deputies are calling for a postponement of the application of this tool to September 15, to allow time for more French people to be vaccinated, Olivier Véran assured that “if we start to push it back, we will be completely under the wave “. The measures contained in the bill, which includes compulsory vaccination of caregivers, an extension of the health pass, compulsory isolation in the event of a positive test – are “exceptional” but “aim to respond to a situation which threatens to quickly become critical”, he said. he added.
After several weeks of decline, the number of cases started to rise again because of the Delta variant, which is more contagious. The government fears that this increase in cases, which mainly affects young people for the moment, will eventually spread to the elderly or fragile unvaccinated and lead to an increase in hospitalizations.
“We have already had an increase for ten consecutive days in the number of hospital admissions”, warned Olivier Véran before the Law Commission, while acknowledging that it was still “difficult to have a very clear vision on the ‘health impact that an epidemic wave can trigger in countries which have already vaccinated all or part of the population ”
