Grandstand. In the evening, shortly before the applause of the caregivers heroized by the President of the Republic, the French discover a colored map of France which intends to illustrate the areas where the “active circulation of the virus”, combined with effective detection capabilities, could put tension the hospital and its resuscitation capabilities.
The most malicious ones see it as a viral version of “Koh-Lanta”: the reds against the greens. Others, older, see it as evoking a bad memory in reference to another war than that waged against the Covid (“Coronavirus Disease”), between confinement and deconfinement. That of a France with a “free” zone and an “occupied” zone, even if the line of demarcation has slid in time between East and West.
If the deadly tension in intensive care is easily quantifiable, an abyssal void is hidden behind this two-color communication device: no one knows precisely how the virus circulates in France, or how it risks recirculating once the confinement is lifted.
A large expansion tank
This is mainly due to the lack of screening tests already implemented by many countries. There are RT-PCR tests, tracking the virus in the back of patients or asymptomatic and vector people, but also antibody tests, by blood test (Elisa [Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay]) or by qualitative measure from a simple drop of blood pricked at the end of the finger: TRODs (rapid tests with diagnostic orientation), which sign that the organism has been in contact with the virus by revealing the presence of antibodies specific.
We could select large samples of the population representative of the most characterized situations, to avoid massive, costly and slow screenings
It is the efficient use of these tests and the respect of barrier gestures (in particular the use of masks), which will make the deconfinement success or failure.
In France, after two months of confinement, the first wave flows slowly, the next wave will arrive, but will it be that of a rising or falling tide? Who can predict it? By mathematical modeling and counting, the average lethality rate of the virus is estimated at 0.6% of symptomatic people, which testifies to its relative benignity.
But in frail or elderly subjects, this rate can rise to more than 10%. The number of subjects who have already contracted the virus in our country is around 5%, or 3.3 million of the 67 million French people, with significant regional disparities. It’s very little in any case. There is in fact a vast reservoir of expansion for resurgences of the virus coming from one corner of our continent or another, because the temporality of the epidemics is not the same according to the continents. The virus has not finished its world tour.
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