Self-tests, masks and ventilation … the recommendations of the Scientific Council for the end-of-year celebrations

“The most useful gesture” to best protect the participants in a party, it is screening, according to the Scientific Council. Worried about the spread of the coronavirus during the holiday season, and worried that family gatherings do not turn into “clusters” for the highly transmissible variant Omicron, experts sent the government on December 8 a list of measures to base to be adopted, made public today.

The sixteen members of the Scientific Council associated with this opinion, including their president Jean-François Delfraissy, first insisted on the fact that “the French had been very respectful vis-à-vis protective measures last year”, during the previous Christmas and New Year celebrations. These family gatherings, which bring together young and old, working and retired, are particularly feared while the epidemic “fifth wave” is still underway, and the Omicron variant appears to be spread at an alarming rate.

For the Scientific Council, the watchword is “screen” : outraged “a complete vaccination schedule”, strongly recommended to participants, it would be “the most useful gesture”. Experts call in particular “the youngest and most socially active, to be screened, either by a self-test on the same day, or by an antigen test, the day before or the day of the event”. Recalling that a self-test costs around 5 euros, the Council even suggests to those who organize the festivities, to make them available to the guests.

The “most fragile people” are also invited to protect themselves using an FFP2 type mask, “as soon as possible”. The organization of parties is also in the sights of the Council, with the need to ventilate the places where they are held, “10 minutes per hour minimum”, even “permanently if possible”. Here too, the experts encourage the organizers to use a CO2 sensor – which makes it possible to react when the air is saturated.

If the Scientific Council stresses the need to fight against the current epidemic wave, mainly due to the Delta variant, it insists on the appearance of the Omicron variant, and recalls that parties have often helped emerging variants to prevail. “The occurrence of large clusters at the start of the epidemic”, explain the members of the Board, “plays a major accelerating role in the spread of the epidemic, and can waste precious weeks of preparation for the epidemic”.