No, there were not only “40 patients in a week for 100,000 inhabitants” in France – LCI

France would experience a “epidemic of tests” to use the phrase used by the “reassurance people”. Opposed to health restrictions, we find in the ranks of this sphere which minimizes the scale of the Covid-19 epidemic, Professor Laurent Toubiana. The one who, in the spring of 2020, assured that there would be no second wave of the epidemic, now says that there are very few patients.

Asked about Cnews this Thursday, December 23, the epidemiologist, known to have participated in the conspiracy documentary Hold Up, said that last week, France had registered only 40 patients per 100,000 inhabitants. A sequence cut by the chain, posted on social networks and gone viral. The post reached 250,000 views in less than 24 hours. But what is it really?

During his intervention, the epidemiologist clarified that he was relying on figures from the Sentinelles network.. In its latest weekly report published on Wednesday, this health surveillance network actually writes that in week 50 – that is, the one going from December 13 to 19 – “25,509 new cases of COVID-19 consulted a general practitioner”. Which represents “39 cases per 100,000 inhabitants”. Data far removed from official indicators. According to latest epidemiological bulletin from Public Health France, the incidence rate for the same week was 550 per 100,000 French. A number thirteen times higher!

How to explain such a gap? The epidemiologist simply misinterpreted the epidemic figures. Those it broadcasts are not fundamentally wrong, but they only represent a tiny fraction of the sick. The network cited by Laurent Toubiana only reports cases observed during consultations in city medicine. The network site – where the professor found these data – also specifies in the preamble that their monitoring is based only on “on the observation of patients with Acute respiratory infection, seen by a general practitioner or a pediatrician”.

In fact, to carry out the monitoring of the epidemic, the health authorities record the data “from several sources”, as Public Health France explains. This area of ​​the network of the territory, represented in the pyramid below, makes it possible to follow the evolution of the virus in several areas. It is thus based on data from general practitioners in town (Sentinels), on those from home interventions (SOS Médecins), but also all those from laboratories, hospitals or nursing homes.

So how do we know, out of the 369,400 new cases recorded between December 13 and 19, how many were sick? Impossible to assess it with certainty. Having said that, a recent study observed that more than half (60%) of positive cases for Covid-19 were symptomatic, and therefore sick. If we compare this estimate to the incidence rate recorded in France last week, this represents more than 320 patients per 100,000 inhabitants. This is eight times more than what Laurent Toubiana claims.

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