The sixteen experts presented their latest opinion at an exceptional press conference Thursday, thought as a “compass” for the coming months.
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“It is a form of goodbye today.” From his office, behind his computer screen, the president of the scientific council, Jean-François Delfraissy, organized, Thursday, July 21, the last conference of This unidentified scientific object appeared at the start of the COVVI-19 health crisis. In a communication exercise that they will have very little confronted during their “two years and four months of diligent work”, the members of the Council presented what will be their last opinion. Neither “Testament” nor “return of experience”, this 75
First observation without surprise: the pandemic is not over. First on the very short term, since the seventh wave refused but has not yet reached its peak in the hospital. But also in the medium term, since we have to expect the appearance of new variants. If the virus now circulates in a endemic way, the strengthening of population immunity makes it possible to hope for better protection against the serious forms of the disease. “This context suggests that the impact of SARS-COV-2 will gradually decrease, but does not presume an absence of short-term viruses’ circulation peaks,” write scientists.
In fact, three scenarios are emerging for the coming months. First hypothesis: epidemic waves will continue to follow one another according to the appearance of new omicron subvariants, as was the case in France with BA.1, followed by BA.2 then BA.5. All with a less important hospital repercussions than for previous variants. Second scenario: a new seasonal wave in the fall with the same subvariant BA. 5 or another genetically close close, for which we can hope for a “managed” hospital impact. Finally, less favorable scenario: the emergence of a “variant X” with an immune or more severe exhaust, with an unpredictable impact. “This is probably not the most at risk scenario, but it is possible,” commented the virologist Bruno Lina.
“The dead linked to omicron have passed in a form of forgetfulness”
In this epidemiological framework, experts ask themselves the question of what concretely means “living with the virus”, the strategy adopted since the appearance of omicron, at the end of December. More contamination, but a lesser clinical gravity: the hospital has managed to absorb the shock once again. However, for five months, 25,000 people have died of COVID-19. A higher figure in absolute terms than in previous waves, but “which has not yet aroused a particularly lively reaction among the population”, can be read in the advice. This strategy of “living with” admits “more or less tacitly […] that a significant number of serious forms and death would be socially accepted, even expected, since economic and social life as well as individual freedoms would be preserved” . A bias that is necessarily made to the detriment of the most vulnerable that are immunocompromised, the elderly and precarious populations far from care. “The dead linked to omicron have passed into a form of forgetting, insists Mr. Delfraissy. We dared to put it black on white so that society can seize the subject.”
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