January 2020. The end-of-year celebrations have just ended in the general carelessness that surrounds most homes at the start of winter. At the foot of fireplaces, in the corridors of clinics or in ministerial lounges, little attention is paid to the infectious disease with the barbaric, almost unpronounceable name, SARS-CoV-2, which has just appeared in the south-east of France. China and plunges the second world power into a stupor. Proof of the lack of concern of the French public authorities, at the end of February, when the first cases of contagion to the virus were discovered on French soil, the Minister of Health, Agnès Buzyn resigned to devote herself to her candidacy for the Paris City Hall.
In the weeks that followed, a focus of several hundred contaminations was born in Mulhouse, in the Bas-Rhin, after a community gathering of the evangelical church. A few hundred kilometers away, in Italy, the infections are linked. Calls for help from residents of the city of Genoa, bruised and bereaved, which parade on television screens, raise fears of the return of the dark hours of the Spanish flu epidemic of the beginning of the 20th century. Doctors, nurses, politicians… All agree: a pandemic is about to break out. Pandemic which, thirty months later, has upset health systems around the world. And the beginnings of the 7th wave are a reminder that dozens of people are still dying every day from Covid-19 in France.
- Spring 2020: “We are at war”
The country is at a standstill. The streets of big cities are unrecognizable, deserted and silent. After a first televised speech by the President of the Republic announcing the closure of schools and the decision, 48 hours later, of the Prime Minister to lower the curtain on shops and restaurants, Emmanuel Macron is due to speak at 8 p.m. on Monday March 16. In a martial tone, the Head of State finally announces generalized confinement, calling on citizens to move only on possession of an administrative certificate. The State promises to provide economic support to weakened companies and employees on short-time work.
In this context of restriction of human activities imposed by the State, families bury their dead without ceremony. In April 2020, up to 800 people die per day from the pandemic. Public authorities and citizens do not yet know that six more will follow: this is the peak of the first wave. It was not until April 20 that hospitalizations experienced a decline. The contagious disease is on a plateau and the virus is part of the daily life of the French.
People suffering from diabetes, overweight and the elderly represent the contingent of patients developing the most serious forms of the virus. Despite the crowded resuscitation rooms, caregivers take turns and keep a hospital on its knees, after a decade of cost-cutting policies pursued by successive governments. The beds are missing. The confinement will end on May 11, 2022, giving way to a series of curfews.
- Autumn 2020: France under curfew, hospitals under strain
After a summer when sunny days had given hope for a world without Covid, France, in the fall of 2020, is still under curfew. Blame the second wave. If cinemas and stadiums had a reopened time, citizens are forced to return to their living room from 6 p.m. “Circulation of the virus resumed during the summer of 2020 throughout France, particularly among young adults. The number of cases diagnosed each day reached 10,000 on September 1,” explains the scientific council in a note. published at the end of October.
The pressure exerted by the virus on the hospital is such that the certification system is still required. The country is still under restrictions, the virus resists and sends hundreds of French people to intensive care every day. It is only in mid-November that the decline is observed.
Despite a slight lull, nurses and doctors also have to deal with a growing problem: mental illness. Successive confinements and curfews have weakened thousands of French people suffering from depressive symptoms, especially among young people whose studies have been disrupted. At the end of winter 2020, France will record nearly 65,000 deaths in less than a year. Above all, the situation will quickly change with the appearance of a variant.
- Spring 2021: schools, shops… Partial closures
His name: Delta. Its origin: United Kingdom. The so-called wild strain of Covid-19 is now in full mutation. After the appearance of the Alpha mutant, this variant, more contagious, is in the process of replacing the original form of the virus, which worries specialists since it circulates much more. “The third wave is here and it is hitting us hard” warns the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, in front of the National Assembly on April 1, 2021. Emergency workers are pushing Emmanuel Macron to “confine” the population in order to avoid the dilemma of sorting patients.
Faced with a substantial influx of patients, some establishments have been forced to give priority to the immediate care of the youngest patients. But to put the country entirely under glass, Emmanuel Macron does not want to resolve it. Nurseries and schools will be closed for three weeks, colleges and high schools for a month. So-called non-essential businesses are housed in the same boat. Teleworking is systematic – when possible -, travel between regions is prohibited and a new curfew is decreed. The goal? Contain the third wave before a summer that the executive hopes will be radiant.
The government strongly believes in the generalization of the use of the vaccine against Covid-19, the first injections of which began on people over 75. Based on Messenger RNA technology, a vaccine is on the market in less than a year, without the appearance of side effects. Unthinkable at the start of the epidemic, the injection against Covid-19 is about to flood European countries.
- Summer 2021: massive vaccination campaign
From there to say that Emmanuel Macron is a lucky dice player, his opponents do not venture there, but the President seems to have won his bet. The third wave seems behind. Contaminations are again on the decline and, above all, France is on the track of a massive vaccination campaign. Gymnasiums, congress halls and even the Stade de France are requisitioned. After having opened vaccination to the public most at risk, the government intends to contain the virus by the collective immunity acquired thanks to the vaccine. 92,679,370 injections were inoculated by the end of the summer. But the epidemic starts again quickly.
Like a boomerang, as soon as the third wave is over, the fourth is coming its way. The peak is reached in mid-August, which pushes the government to enthrone the health pass, a document that ensures that you are vaccinated or tested negative.
If the vaccination campaign is a success with nearly 70% of citizens vaccinated, it seems to have reached a ceiling. In mid-summer 2021, requests for appointments dry up. The Doctolib platform, on which the French had rushed from the start of the summer to the point of interrupting the server, is deserted. The return of winter, more conducive to the circulation of the virus, awaits. The fifth wave could still be destructive. Already imposed on caregivers, compulsory vaccination is made compulsory by the government.
- Fall 2021: vaccination pass and emergence of the antivax movement
This is another side of the story of the epidemic which is revealed in this fall of 2021. The executive has decided: “To protect ourselves and for our unity, we must go towards the vaccination of all French people because it is the only path to a return to normal life”. It will now be necessary to be provided with proof of vaccination – complete – to access restaurants, concerts and all the festivities of social life. This is the arrival of the vaccination pass. This gave rise to an explosive social movement.
One scene probably tells it better than all the rest. Place de la République in Paris, December 2021. In the middle of the crowd of this heterodox demonstration, families, who came with their little ones on their shoulders, brandished signs calling for the end of vaccines. Defenders of individual freedoms find themselves pounding the pavement with public figures from the National Rally, such as Florian Philippot, hoping to capitalize on the fury electorally. Young people are there too.
It is an audience with diverse faces and aspirations who parade, week after week, in the processions following one another in the capital and the big cities. Fueled by more or less eccentric conspiracy theories, the antivax movement will rally a few media figures and find an audience on social networks, in particular.
This does not make health professionals forget the reality of this fifth wave, which appeared in the wake of the new Omicron variant. It circulates mainly among young people and further diversifies the profile of hospitalized people. If it seems less virulent than the Delta variant, Omicron poses other challenges to public authorities. The massive testing policy is gradually being abandoned and the isolation procedure simplified. One more step towards a policy of alleviating constraints.
- Spring 2022: the end of restrictions
January 2022. The contamination rate is decreasing, as are admissions to the intensive care unit. Despite the slew of mutations in its strains observed for months, the Covid-19 seems to be in a phase of decline. The concerts resume in February in configurations reminiscent of those known in the past.
A few weeks later, as the war in Ukraine threatens, Jean Castex announces the lifting of the obligation to wear a mask in business and in transport, on March 14, shortly before the first round of a presidential election where Emmanuel Macron is a candidate for his succession. The oppositions cannot refrain from pointing to an electoralist measure. At the same time, the peak of the sixth wave is approaching and will peak around March 31.
However, the government’s decision is part of a policy that began several weeks earlier. Vaccination pass, gauge in football stadiums, standing catering… it’s a whole series of conventions with which the French were used to living that fly away. A scent of the old world seizes the terraces of the cafés which fill up when the fine weather returns. But a seventh wave threatens…
- Summer 2022: a 7th wave is approaching
Now, while wearing a mask appears in public transport as the symbol of a bygone era, the latest indicators of the epidemic remind us that the summer we are going to experience will not be placed under the sign of life without Covid-19. A return to reality reminiscent of the summer of 2021, when the lifting of curfews fed the idea that the virus was behind us.
At the same time, the number of cases is exploding (70,000 cases/day on average), which worries epidemiologists. Especially since the screening policy is less massive than a year ago since pharmacists now carry out half as many tests. At the start of the school holidays, the virus is circulating very actively.
The epidemic, however, seems less ferocious. There were 127 critical care admissions every day last summer, compared to 77 now. The number of deaths was also slightly higher twelve months ago. Which tends to say that vaccination and the immunity acquired after these two and a half years of health crisis have effects on the virus. The history of the epidemic also reminds us that the health system suffers less from the shocks caused by the successive waves.
In this context, the executive intends to curb the virus without forcing. Is this strategy tenable? Anyway, citizens, politicians and health personnel hope that this summer of 2022 will sign the last chapter of a story that everyone would have gladly given up.