The President of the Scientific Council hinted at the end of the fifth wave in mid-March, while recalling that the appearance of a new variant could come to contradict his forecasts.
The president of the Scientific Council Jean-François Delfraissy did not wear a mask this Tuesday morning on the set of FranceInfo, an unusual fact for the immunologist. Asked about this, he recalled that the epidemic was still ongoing, a “long, long course” epidemic.
“Nevertheless, we still have to start seeing our faces a little bit again,” he explains, stressing that social distance was respected in the studio.
“I did not say that we were finished, far from it, I told you that we were going to suffer a lot until mid-March”, he underlines, but “on the contrary, we have a level of vaccination which is going to be very high, the drugs which are coming, perhaps a virus which will become commonplace…” Elements which will make it possible to live better with the virus.
Stopping the indoor mask “not for now”
However, these projections remain conditional on the imminent appearance of a new variant, which could be more virulent and lead to the reinstatement of restrictions.
In the meantime, “I take the metro I have my mask, I am in the street I have my mask, in my workplace I have my mask, because I see people”. And according to him, stopping the wearing of the mask indoors is “not for now, we must continue to wear it, we continue to wear it”.
The Covid-19, we “will continue to talk about it for a very long time”, declared the president of the Scientific Council, “in practice we still have a year 2022 which is going to be difficult”. According to him, “we can imagine a spring of 2022 which happens in not too bad conditions”, if a new, more virulent variant does not appear, but “there will surely be something in the fall”.