More than 4,500 new positive cases for the coronavirus were detected daily Thursday and Friday, figures unpublished since May, according to Public Health France (SpF).
Reason enough to worry even more about the situation?
No, say the optimists. Admittedly, the number of cases detected last week (around 16,800) is higher than it was in mid-March, at the start of containment. However, it is difficult to compare: few tests were carried out at the time, and mainly on patients with severe forms, whereas today nearly 700,000 tests are carried out per week and that more than half of positive tests concern people without no symptoms.
Another less pessimistic argument: the number of new contaminations has been increasing for several weeks but we have not observed any notable change in the number of people hospitalized or in intensive care.
“We have no increase in hospitalizations or deaths”
Since the peak reached on April 8, with 7,148 patients in intensive care, this figure has continued to drop until the end of July and has changed little since (379 this weekend).
For epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, this is the essential. “We have no increase in hospitalizations or deaths, which would be a much more worrying alarm signal”. “We enjoy a wonderful summer respite in Western Europe,” he adds, while this is not the case elsewhere (Israel, South Africa or Australia).
More positive cases detected but no major impact on hospitals: the virus “seems to circulate preferentially for the moment in populations that are not very fragile, not very sensitive to serious forms of the infection: young populations or people who do not have no risk factor “, recently estimated the virologist Vincent Maréchal on France 2.
Perhaps because those under 65 have resumed their social interactions more than their elders, with less respect for barrier gestures (greeting without kissing, physical distance, hand washing, etc.), according to the latest surveys by health authorities.
A virus “more contagious but less fatal”?
“Behavior changes such as better hand hygiene and” physical distancing “mean that infected people are infected with” a lower viral dose than in the period before confinement, which results in a less severe disease “, also suggests Brendan Wren, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
An article published recently in the journal Cell has also relaunched the hypothesis of a mutation of the virus which would have made it more contagious but less fatal.
But many commentators point out that this strain of the virus carrying the mutation has been identified since April and was circulating in Europe during the first wave. They therefore consider that it is hardly credible that it is the cause of the lower mortality rate currently observed.
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