When will the fifth end? Started in the fall with the resurgence of the Delta variant, amplified in December with the arrival of Omicron, this wave continues to climb. According to the latest data from Public Health France, more than 270,000 positive tests are recorded every day in the country … which could soon see the end of the tunnel. Pr Alain Fischer, president of the Council of orientation of the vaccine strategy, is optimistic.

“In March, we should arrive at a very good control of the current wave”, he indicates in the columns of The Express. “A period of calm should then open up before us.” According to the immunologist, new variants can always arise. But they should be even less virulent than Omicron, whose dangerousness is already reduced compared to its predecessors.

This variant “was probably selected in an immunocompromised individual, in which it has accumulated favorable mutations to resist the immune response”, explains Alain Fischer. “For a next variant to be selected, it will in turn have to be very different. And therefore it will have to have a lot of mutations, which will take time. It will not have to kill the patient in who it will have appeared, which implies less aggressiveness. This is a plausible reasoning.”

Therefore, if the hoped-for calm is confirmed at the end of winter, will France let the virus circulate with less surveillance, like countries like Spain? “We are not quite in the same situation yet”, with less vaccination in France, tempers Professor Fischer. “At least in the short term, it will be necessary to maintain braking measures. In the medium term, it will be possible to envisage monitoring the epidemic differently, with fewer tests and a ‘sentinel’ surveillance system similar to that of the flu But it’s probably still too early.”