The 15 departments where the figures of the Covid-19 epidemic are no longer falling | The HuffPost – The HuffPost

SCIENCE – While the mask will fall on Monday, October 4 from the faces of students in schools in 47 departments, the government wants to extend the possibility of using the health pass until summer 2022. Two decisions which might seem contradictory, but which reminds us that theepidemic of Covid-19 is unfortunately not entirely behind us.

For several weeks, the figures of the coronavirus are globally positive, with a drop in the incidence and hospitalizations, except in Guyana, where the epidemic continues to flare up (the incidence exceeds 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants), with overcrowding of hospitals and a number of deaths higher than the previous wave.

And as regards the metropolitan territory, the situation is increasingly heterogeneous. According to the figures available this Friday, October 1, in addition to Guyana, the incidence rate is up over one week in 14 departments, as we can see on the map belows.

However, we should not panic. In all these departments, the incidence is rather low, with a maximum of 75 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the Jura. In six departments, it is even below the alert threshold set by the executive at 50 cases. This means that children in these departments will be able to take off the mask on Monday but that they may have to put it back on if the rise continues.

Another point of vigilance, the epidemic is not progressing at the same rate in each territory. Thus, the increase is barely 1% in the Pyrénées-Orientales. On the other hand, it is 81% in Charente, as can be seen in the summary table below.

It should be understood that with very low incidence rates in sparsely populated departments, a single cluster can give the impression of an explosion. Thus, if the incidence increased by 44% over one week in Cantal, only 36 cases were recorded.

Clearly, there is no cause for alarm yet, far from it. But we must remain cautious. In Charente, we see that the increase in incidence is present in most age groups, but that it increases less and less rapidly for 40-49 year olds and 10-19 year olds. There is therefore little chance that we are facing a simple cluster, but the situation is not yet out of control. It will be necessary to wait to see what is the evolution over several days to be clear about it.

For the moment, the coronavirus is circulating in the territory without that we really manage to supervise it, even with a low incidence. Thus, Public Health France recalls in its last epidemiological point that if the proportion of positive cases which were identified upstream by the contact tracing system increases, nearly 8 infected out of 10 are still detected positive without having been traced. Clearly, we are not succeeding in tracing the chains of contamination.

Also note: “the number of cases reporting school attendance is decreasing, but the number of cases having participated in a gathering in a professional environment is slightly increasing, as are those having participated in a cultural activity or event” , specifies Public Health France.

When we look in detail, it does not seem, in fact, that the weakest age groups (much less vaccinated however) are at the origin of the escalation of cases in these 14 departments.

To go further, find below our more generic indicators for monitoring the coronavirus epidemic, updated daily.

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