The Covid invites itself into the summer break with an outbreak of cases after popular gatherings, like the Bayonne festivities . At the same time, a new variant has joined the watchlist of the World Health Organization.
Under two and over 75
Named “Eris”, this EG.5 strain has already been spotted in the UK and the US. In France, this new variant is present in 34% of people who tested positive whose viruses were sequenced, according to Gisaid, a reference database. This sub-variant of the Omicron family, member of the XBB lineage, seems more transmissible than others in circulation – probably under the effect of new genetic mutations -, and perhaps more capable of escaping immune defences.
“It has been identified in India, but also in other Asian countries, in North America, in Europe, where it tends to supplant the previous dominant strains. This variant is not reported, where it has passed, to cause specific symptoms or particular virulence“, told AFP Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva. But “the risk remains that a more dangerous variant will emerge and cause a sudden spike in cases and deaths“WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie are the two regions in which the number of Covid cases detected via laboratory PCR tests was the highest, in the week of July 31 to August 6, franceinfo learned this Friday from Public Health France . Some 789 cases of Covid have thus been detected in New Aquitaineparticularly in the Landes and Pyrénées-Atlantiques, indicates Public Health France, which specifies that “this localized increase in the territory can be explained by the Bayonne Festival from July 26 to 30, whose conditions in terms of population density may have favored transmission“. Occitania is the second region with the most cases detected in the laboratory (730) last week, followed by Île-de-France (689), Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur (638) and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (537).
In the emergency room, the passages for suspicions of Covid increase in one week by 210% in the Pays de la Loire, according to Public Health France . This trend is also marked in Normandy (+71%), in Burgundy Franche-Comte (+67%) and in New Aquitaine (+55%). Children under two (+56%) and those over 75 (+34%) are the most represented. About a thousand emergency room visits were linked to a suspected Covid-19 case last week, a figure on the rise. The trend was the same at SOS Médecins with 1,512 diagnoses of Covid-19, an increase of 84% in one week. “If an increase in the number of cases is observed in all regions, reports to Public Health France, most cases have been reported in busy holiday regions“.
A drop in our immunity and the absence of barrier gestures
These percentages from Santé Publique France and the influence of the new variant should nevertheless be put into perspective. The consequences on the hospital environment are for the moment very weak. The incidence rate of Covid has not been updated at the national level since the beginning of the summer, with then 11 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
The Covid returned on Wednesday in the list of the 10 most frequent diagnoses at SOS Médecins, up in all age groups. The new variant benefits from a gradual decline in immunity acquired through vaccines and contamination, and the absence of barrier gestures.