The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control has just announced the color: by the end of August, the Delta variant is expected to account for 90% of new cases of Covid-19 in the European Union, as this is already the case in the United Kingdom. For the moment, Occitania can count on the fingers of both hands the number of cases detected on its territory, when in the Landes it would already represent 70 of the positive cases for Covid-19.
To prevent, or rather delay, its dissemination in the region, the health authorities have decided to draw strong as soon as it appears. This was the case when a tanker at anchor in Port-la-Nouvelle imported the first cases of the Indian variant Delta. Since then, only another has been identified at the end of last week, in Toulouse, among the employees of Airbus Defense & Space.
Since Monday morning, a massive screening and vaccination campaign has been set up on the site, which has 5,000 employees. Between Monday and Wednesday, out of the 400 antigenic tests carried out, none turned out to be positive. At the same time, 200 injections of the vaccine were given. A device that will remain in place until the end of the week.
Vaccination VS spread
A way to avoid the spread of the Delta variant, while the number of contaminations continues to drop in Haute-Garonne, with 176 positive cases per day on average in the region against 201 the previous week. The authorities hope to be able to curb its distribution, to avoid ending up in the Landes case. Identified for the first time in a family from Dax, it represented 30% of those infected eight days ago and 70% today.
For the Regional Health Agency, “everything is now in the face of the delta variant”. “Faced with this new risk of contamination, the call for vaccination is reinforced for all: it is imperative to vaccinate as many people as possible as soon as possible. Vaccination is effective against this variant: there is more than 70% protection against severe forms after the first dose and more than 90% after the second dose, regardless of the vaccine, ”recalls the health authority. In Occitania, one in two people received a first dose of vaccine, i.e. 2.9 million people.