Boris Johnson is definitely in a hurry to turn the page on Covid-19. Just a few days after his announcements on the gradual abandonment of the latest health restrictions – such as teleworking and wearing a mask – the end of the isolation of positive cases is also pointing the tip of his nose. The British Prime Minister had already made clear that he did not intend to renew the law making it mandatory to isolate themselves for those who tested positive after it expired on March 24, but this should finally end before the end of February, he said on Wednesday, a month ahead of his original schedule. The measure could fall as early as February 21, after the parliamentary holidays.
“BoJo” thus continues its policy of “living with the Covid”. Mainly to save his head, in the midst of the “Partygate” crisis? Not only. If contaminations remain at a high level – around 50,000 on average each day (a very large majority in England) – hospital tension is gradually weakening. The most critical cases, experiencing the need for artificial respirators, represent only a small part of these patients. This last curve does not really seem to have been impacted by Omicron, which is less severe than its predecessors Alpha and Delta.
Other figures, however, show a slightly less rosy picture. “The incidence in the UK is 840 new infections per 100,000 people over 7 days, but the reproduction rate is 0.9, which means the incidence is halving every month whereas in France , where the incidence is twice as high today, the reproduction rate below 0.7 raises hopes that it will halve every week.The early lifting of measures may be the cause in the Kingdom United by a halt in the epidemic decline which, initially, had taken the same pace as in France”, points to L’Express the epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of global health and professor at the faculty of Medicine of Geneva, about the policy led by Boris Johnson. It therefore seems, according to the expert, “a pity to have taken such risks and not to have waited a few weeks for the real epidemic decline”.
remember last summer
Could the exit from the crisis finally take longer in the United Kingdom than elsewhere? The situation reminds Professor Antoine Flahault of that of last summer. “The country had relaxed its measures in the midst of the Delta wave, while France was establishing its health pass and continuing to wear the mandatory mask in many public places. The result was a recovery of the wave in France but the maintenance of ‘a high plateau of infections with more than one hundred daily deaths in the UK during the summer and early autumn.
Basically, the decision is above all political. A bit like in France, on the way to abandoning the mask in closed places subject to the vaccine pass (by February 28) and downright the vaccine pass (“at the end of March, beginning of April, the carrier recently put forward speech of the government Gabriel Attal). “These announcements – British and French – are not based on indicators, neither short nor long term, but on an arbitrary rhetoric of binarization of the epidemic which consists in saying ‘after the peak of Omicron, the pandemic is over ‘, slice with L’Express the epidemiologist and specialist in the modeling of infectious diseases at the University of Montpellier, Mircea Sofonea. I am not saying that there is an imminent and significant risk to be released, but at what moment did we collectively choose where to place the cursor of prevention of a preventable disease, and to the impact of morbidity and mortality again not negligible?”
The criticism joins that of Professor Gilbert Deray, who still at L’Express, affirms with sad irony: “In France, we have decided that the Covid-19 pandemic is over (…) We anticipate, with the suppression of protective measures, the announced disappearance of Covid-19, not just a transitory improvement, but its announced transformation into a “mild endemic flu”.
Scientists around the world urge caution. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recalled on Friday that the “acute phase” of the Covid-19 pandemic would end this year, only if the objective of 70% of the world population vaccinated is reached. Which is still not the case, far from it: 54% of the inhabitants of the planet have completed their vaccination cycle, with strong disparities, as in Africa (only 10% of the continent concerned).
But Europe is already taking the lead and is beginning to perceive Covid-19 as the flu currently is, like Spain, and many others. “Making citizens take advantage of lulls is probably a good policy, recognizes Antoine Flahault, but only when the lull is pronounced, and not a month before or worse at the top of the wave, as the Danes are doing now.” Denmark indeed lifted all of its last restrictions on February 1, and even clarified on Friday that it intended to cease vaccination soon. Even though contaminations and hospitalizations are still growing. A high-risk game, the price of which is not yet known. “Cautious policies will undoubtedly pay off in the medium and perhaps also the long term”, concludes Antoine Flahault.