As the end of the year holidays approach, the increase in figures linked to the Covid-19 pandemic is worrying. Vincent Enouf, deputy director of the National Reference Center for Respiratory Viruses at the Institut Pasteur, calls for remobilization in the face of this fifth wave.
The trends are not good. Hospitalizations, incidence rate, reproduction rate … All indicators linked to Covid-19 are on the increase, which raises fears of the announcement of health measures a few weeks before the end of the year holidays. “Christmas is in danger, yes,” assures Vincent Enouf, deputy director of the National Reference Center for Respiratory Viruses at the Institut Pasteur, invited to BFMTV on December 1.
“We have the weapons, we have surveillance. It is now that we must act, it is immediately, to have a more or less normal Christmas,” he asserts.
According to the specialist, it is necessary to concentrate on the vaccination. “Scientifically, the vaccine is the essential thing that will prevent the spread of the virus,” he explains. He also recalls that the majority of people hospitalized due to Covid-19 in France have not received their doses.
First case of Omicron in France
However, the question remains unanswered with regard to the Omicron variant, which is not yet massively present on French territory, but which could gain momentum in the coming weeks. “By studying its genome, we realized that it had a lot of mutations”, summarizes Vincent Enouf, which “could” cause “a decrease in the effectiveness of the vaccine”. However, he tempers these remarks by explaining that, “for the moment, we do not know much about this variant”.
At present, the majority variant therefore remains Delta, even if it is “plausible that the Omicron variant is present in metropolitan France” for the specialist. Only one case was officially spotted in France on December 1, on Reunion Island. The infected man and his entourage were quickly placed in isolation according to the ARS and the prefecture.