The eighteen experts do not recommend the obligation to carry the mask or that of vaccination but advise to clarify prevention messages to better “empower the population”.
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A little less than a month after the announcement of its composition, the monitoring and anticipation committee of health risks (Covars), successor to the scientific council, Publish his first opinion , Monday, October 24, on the Epidemiological situation linked to the COVVI-19 in France. The eighteen experts issue several recommendations, in particular on the necessary acceleration of the vaccination campaign, the need for better communication on the port of the mask, the promotion of antigenic and self-tests, as well as the amplification of the use of Paxlovid – The main antiviral available against the disease.
requested on September 29 as part of a referral to the Ministries of Health and Higher Education and Research, this opinion, written very quickly, is published while the eighth wave of contaminations seems to reflect, after Having reached a maximum of October 10, with more than 56,000 new cases per day. This peak should also soon be reached in terms of hospitalizations, which stabilized at some 1,100 new daily admissions. Despite everything, more than 70 people continue to die every day of the epidemic.
“The situation seems quite stable and will go towards decrease, because the reproduction rate is around 1, a sign of the inversion of the epidemic curve”, underlines the epidemiologist Fabrice Carrat, member of the Covars, during of the conference organized on Monday. “But it is quite difficult to make projections in the medium term because we do not know how seasonal factors will act on the dynamics of the epidemic, the level of immunity in the population remains insufficient and there is the risk of seeing emerge a new variant with an immune exhaust, “he adds. In particular the bq.1.1 sub-lineage, a variant of omicron, which is in the process of imposing itself in France and in other European countries. According to experts, the next two weeks will be decisive to see if a ninth wave will be looming.
“Response the population”
Beyond this epidemic and viral inventory, Covars “recommends to COVVI-19 prevention and health management policies a global approach targeting all seasonal respiratory viral diseases”. A kind of normalization of the COVID-19, therefore, treated as a winter disease in the same way as the flu. However, underlines Mahmoud Zureik, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Versailles-Saint Quentin (Yvelines), the COVVI-19 has not yet become a seasonal disease. “In the year 2022, four waves have already succeeded,” he recalls, one every two to three months.
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