Omicron: 464,769 new Covid contaminations in 24 hours, a record in France

Such a figure had never been reached since the start of the epidemic. This Tuesday evening, France has 464,769 new cases of Covid-19 detected in the past 24 hours and is dangerously close to the 500,000 mark. On the other hand, in hospitals, the number of entries also continues to rise, with 26,526 patients today, against 25,776 on Monday. Among them, 3,881 people were admitted to critical care. This is a little less than the day before (3913) and last Tuesday (3969).

However, for the past few days, some have been optimistic: the end of the tunnel would not be so far. “The worst-case scenario is moving away, the decline has begun”, noted on Monday the Professor Arnaud Fontanet, member of the scientific council, at the microphone of France Inter. No later than this Tuesday morning, Gabriel Attal also ensured, enthusiastic, that there are “reasons” to believe in a way out of the health crisis.

“We see that the Delta wave has really regressed, that the circulation tends to slow down, and that in the regions where the Omicron wave started first, in particular in Ile-de-France, there is what seems to be the beginning of a ‘a decline’, explained the government spokesperson on CNews.

Against the highly contagious Omicron variant, however, great care must be taken. “Traditional measures do not really have an impact”, assumed, last week, Olivier Véran on France Info. For the Minister of Health and Solidarity, “when we make 370,000 diagnoses on a given day, we can consider that there are not far from a million in reality” even “more than 500,000 a day”, he admitted.

But one hope has been confirmed in recent weeks: Omicron is less dangerous than the previous strains of the virus. It causes fewer hospitalizations, both because populations are better vaccinated and because it is in itself less virulent.

In terms of deaths, the epidemic has caused the death of 289 people in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths in France since the start of the pandemic, almost two years ago, to 127,690.

In the field of vaccination, more than 53.6 million people have received at least one injection (79.6% of the total population) and more than 52.3 million now have a complete vaccination schedule (i.e. 77.6% of the total population). In addition, some 32.4 million people received a booster dose.