LIVE – Olivier Véran: the Omicron variant “has probably been in circulation for several weeks”

It’s a new record. Since November 26, the date on which the Minister of Health Olivier Véran announced the conditioning of the health pass to a booster dose, more than 5.5 million French people have made an appointment for their third injection on Doctolib.

On July 12, the announcement of the implementation of the health pass resulted in 3.7 million appointments in one week. This week, around 615,000 French people validated a slot on Doctolib every day. Almost 60% of them are under 50, specifies the site of medical appointments.

At least 17 people are suspected at this stage of having contracted the Omicron variant after a party last week in Oslo, after which more than half of the roughly 100 participants, who were all vaccinated, tested positive for Covid , the municipality said on Friday.

“So far, 60 people have tested positive with a PCR test and four others with a rapid test,” Oslo city services said in an email to AFP. “Seventeen are probably (cases of the variant) Omicron but not yet confirmed. So far, one case of Omicron has been confirmed by sequencing.”

Between 100 and 120 people, one of whom had recently traveled to southern Africa, gathered at a restaurant in Oslo last Friday for a Christmas dinner hosted by their employer, the solar energy producer Scatec.

On BFMTV-RMC this Friday morning, Jean-Luc Mélenchon recalled the importance of the vaccination campaign, while speaking out against compulsory vaccination and calling for the return of free tests. According to him, “we must convince and not coerce” on the issue of vaccination.

Find more details in our article.

The Minister of Health Olivier Véran affirmed it this Friday morning: “in France, today, a patient is admitted in intensive care every ten minutes”. Catherine, 70, spent two weeks in intensive care at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny (Île-de-France).

If she had not made the choice of vaccination before her Covid-19 infection, at the microphone of BFMTV, she now regrets it and encourages others.

“Get vaccinated, because it’s too difficult to go through everything you go through to be cured, when you can be cured,” she explains.

While the elementary school adopted a new health protocol since Monday, it faces a rise in positive cases. This Friday, 33,550 students tested positive for Covid-19 against just under 22,000 last week.

However, the number of closed classes has halved in a week (from 8,890 to 4,578), while the protocol no longer consists of closing a class in the first case of Covid.

“We have enough messenger RNA vaccines to vaccinate everyone so we are not dependent on future deliveries”, reassured Olivier Véran on Franceinfo.

“Every day, there are 600,000 to 700,000 slots that open (…) people who connect and only find an appointment in March in their region, they can rest assured, they will be vaccinated before January 15, “assured the Minister of Health, insisting on the opening of 300 new vaccination centers.

If the High Authority of Health recommends it, “we will open vaccination to all children by January”, announced the Minister of Health.

“For children who have comorbidities, who are fragile (…) between mid and late December, vaccination will undoubtedly be open to them,” added Olivier Véran.

The Omicron variant “has probably been circulating for several weeks,” says Olivier Véran, who explains that the laboratories have sequenced suspected positive cases which “had been diagnosed more than a week ago even before the Omicron variant was tracked down in Europe” .

“We have already had variants like this which emerged at some point without them necessarily leading to large epidemic waves. Our common enemy today is the Delta variant”, however added the minister. of Health on Franceinfo.

Faced with the resurgence of cases and the Omicron variant, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran called on the French to “be very careful”. “In France today, it is a patient who is admitted to intensive care every ten minutes, day and night,” alerted the training doctor, on the Franceinfo platform.

“There are two fundamental parameters that can change the situation: booster vaccinations (…) and social distancing,” said Olivier Véran, specifying that we “still had our fate in our hands”.

“Nine cases (of the Omicron variant) have been confirmed in five different regions”, explained the Minister of Solidarity and Health Olivier Véran, guest of Franceinfo.

According to him, “the urgency is the fifth wave and the Delta variant (…) but the urgency is also to slow down the diffusion of Omicron”. “We still need a few days (…) to be able to better identify the variant,” added the minister, masked.

Near-containment for the unvaccinated, draft law on compulsory vaccination, limitation of large gatherings … Germany, faced with an upsurge in Covid cases, is tightening the screw.

We take a look back at the new health restrictions across the Rhine in our article.

At a press briefing organized by the WHO Africa office, a South African infectious disease specialist said “a previous infection does not protect against Omicron”.

More details in our article.

The number of cases of infection with the Omicron variant detected in France now amounts to nine, according to the latest report updated Friday morning by the Ministry of Health. But how are “suspected”, “possible” and “confirmed” cases defined?

BFMTV.com returns in an article on Public Health France criteria establishing that a person is a suspected, possible or confirmed case of an infection with the Omicron variant.

The first cases of local transmission of Omicron were reported Thursday and Friday in the United States and Australia, heightening concerns about this new variant of the coronavirus, already dominant in South Africa and which could become so in Europe.

In the United States, five cases of the Omicron variant were confirmed Thursday in New York State, one in California, one in Minnesota and one in Hawaii, bringing the total of confirmed cases so far in the country to ten. .

In Minnesota, the infected person had traveled to New York but had not traveled overseas. And in Hawaii, the patient was unvaccinated but had not traveled, showing that the variant has started to be spread between people within the United States.

“This is a case of local transmission,” the Hawaii Department of Health confirmed in a statement.

Australia for its part announced on Friday that it had detected a first case of the Omicron variant in a student who had not traveled abroad in Sydney.

The number of cases of infections with the Omicron variant detected in France now stands at nine, according to the latest report communicated by the Ministry of Solidarity and Health this Friday morning.

“At this stage, 9 cases have been detected in France in the following territories: Reunion, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Ile-de-France, Pays de la Loire and Grand Est region” , announce the health authorities.

Thursday evening, Public Health France evoked 8 cases, in his weekly update published Thursday evening.