The concern is palpable in the latest communications from health authorities and the government on the evolution of Covid in France. A 9th wave of rapid coronavirus is confirmed in the latest figures available this Friday, December 2 as in the more general assessments…
Public Health France confirmed this in its latest weekly epidemiological update this weekend: the Covid has again been on the rise in France since the beginning of November, with a 9th wave which promises to be more powerful than the previous one. The French health agency evokes “an acceleration of the circulation of SARS-CoV-2” in the last week of November, still driven by the BA.5 variant of Omicron which represents 93% of the results of the latest “Flash ” on variants.
The report is also concerned about the growing disinterest in vaccination, with only “7.2% of people aged 60-79 and 9.4% of people aged 80 and over [ayant] received a reminder adapted to the Omicron variant” and calls for an “accentuated” application of barrier gestures, including the wearing of a mask. While the threat hovers again over the end-of-year celebrations, the current government spokesperson and former Minister of Health Olivier Véran for his part called on the French, on BFMTV Thursday, to get vaccinated again if they are not up to date with the reminder.
The latest Covid figures in France are alarming
The latest daily assessment of the coronavirus epidemic, published Thursday evening, illustrates this new surge. 69,253 cases were thus recorded in 24 hours on December 1, 2022, i.e. 18,723 cases more than the previous Thursday. The 7-day average rose well above 50,000 daily cases this week, with 53,341 cases recorded daily in the latest tally. The incidence rate is 494.38 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in France currently and is also progressing rapidly (454.21 the day before).
In hospitals, there were 19,669 patients hospitalized with Covid-19 on Thursday evening (up 172 from the previous day) while 1,089 people were in intensive care (-23). In 24 hours, 1,303 patients with a positive diagnosis of Covid-19 were admitted to hospital, 134 less than the day before and 414 more compared to last Thursday. 94 intensive care admissions were recorded, 30 less than the day before and 19 more than last Thursday. The number of deaths recorded in 24 hours at the hospital was 76 dead (excluding Ehpad), or 15 less than the day before and 20 more than last Thursday.
Here is the latest official data available on Covid-19 in France according to the daily reports of Public health Francefrom its data site Geodes and of Data.gouv, based on data from SI-DEP tests, hospital data and feedback from medico-social establishments, including nursing homes. Many clarifications are necessary to properly understand these figures. They are detailed below the table:
PRECISION : since January 16, 2022, the official publication of the total number of confirmed cases since the start of the epidemic (total accumulation) has been suspended “en due to an extension of the data consolidation period”, specifies Data.gouv. The first figure displayed above is therefore not an official figure, but comes from an accumulation carried out by us from non-consolidated data published daily via the SI-DEP database. Reinfections are counted as new cases. In addition, since June 8, 2022, Public Health France and Data.gouv no longer update epidemic data on weekends and public holidays.
Here is the number of cases of Covid-19, deaths, hospitalizations, resuscitations and cures observed in more or less compared to the previous assessment (generally the day before). Latest data available in France according to daily reports from Public Health France and Data.gouv:
PRECISION : concerning the daily data on the epidemic, and in particular the number of cases, Public Health France specifies that “the data can be very variable depending on the screening activities (reduction of activities on weekends for example, mechanically lowering the number of cases on Monday) and deadlines for rendering results” (generally 24 to 48 hours).
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From daily data on the coronavirus in France, we have developed several curves which allow us to observe the evolution of the virus according to the number of confirmed cases, the number of hospitalizations and patients in intensive care, the number of deaths in the hospital and total deaths and the number of returns home, assimilated to cures.
For the first graph, the curve represents the average of the cases recorded daily over 7 days while the bars represent the number of cases recorded in the last daily report. For the other graphs, the curve represents the total (e.g. total hospitalizations in progress) while the bars correspond to daily changes (balances of hospitalizations each day, new deaths, etc.).
Details on the number of cases: several changes in the method of recording positive tests may have disrupted the counting of cases since the start of the epidemic:
- The government and Public Health France changed their method of collecting data on test results in mid-May 2020, with the SI-DEP project. The figures recorded before and after May 13, 2020 are therefore not completely comparable. Both the quantity and the nature of the tests carried out have greatly evolved. From a few thousand tests at the very start of the epidemic, France went to more than 1 million tests each week and then to 2 million at the start of November 2020, inevitably impacting the figures. In addition, at the height of the first wave, in March/April 2020, the tests mainly concerned seriously ill people, generally admitted to hospital, setting aside all patients with no or few symptoms. The actual number of Covid-19 cases in France was therefore quite significantly higher than the estimated number of confirmed cases during this period.
- Since mid-November 2020, the number of positive tests includes, in addition to PCR tests, the results of antigen tests.
- A duplicate correction was made by Public Health France on May 20, 2021. While there had been more than 5.9 million cases in France since the start of the epidemic, this figure was revised to nearly 5.57 million, or 348,846 fewer cases. A very visible correction on the curve above. others “incidents” on the flow of data have been reported several times by Public Health France.
Details on hospitalizations: it is necessary to distinguish here the evolution of the total number of patients hospitalized at a time T and the new hospitalizations, in other words the new admissions each day to the hospital (gross). In one case, it is a balance, which takes into account admissions, but also discharges from the hospital (healings or deaths). In the other, we are only talking about new admissions to hospital or intensive care with Covid over a day.
Hospitalization data also takes into account patients admitted to hospital “with” Covid-19 and not “for” Covid-19. They can therefore take into account patients hospitalized for another reason. Among all Covid-19 patients, the share of patients admitted to hospital for a reason other than Covid-19 (but carriers of SARS-CoV-2) may have reached up to a third of patients according to detailed data that Public Health France has made available since the end of January 2022.
Precision on the number of deaths: since May 2020, Public Health France no longer updates the balance sheet in Ehpad daily. This report was updated every week, then several times a week to finally stabilize at a rate of once or twice a week. We therefore initially preferred to erase the number of daily deaths in nursing homes so as not to skew the graphs. At the request of several readers, since November 13, 2020, we are again displaying updates of deaths in nursing homes (dark gray bars) which causes artificial peaks during updates. Data errors and corrections have also been reported on several occasions by Public Health France since mid-March 2020 but also noted at the end of 2021, sometimes resulting in overestimates generally followed by negative changes in the number of deaths.
The Ministry of Health calculates, from the raw data, a series of statistics on the progression of Covid-19 in the country. Four particularly important indicators are presented below: the positivity rate of RT-PCR tests, the incidence rate, the effective reproduction number and the occupancy rate of intensive care beds. If the first and the last are easily understandable (percentage of positive tests out of the total number of tests carried out and percentage of intensive care beds occupied according to the initial capacities of the country), the other two deserve a definition.
The incidence rate, represented by the second curve, is considered a key indicator of the virulence of the virus. This is the number of new cases of coronavirus diagnosed by PCR test that have occurred over the past 7 days. This figure is related to the number of inhabitants, ie a rate expressed per 100,000 inhabitants.
The reproduction number (R) corresponds to the average number of people infected by a patient. If this figure is greater than 1, it means that a person with Covid-19 infects more than one other person on average and therefore that the disease is progressing.
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Precision on the positivity rate and the incidence rate: Public Health France changed its calculation method for its main indicators, which are the incidence rate and the test positivity rate on December 8, 2020. The addition of antigenic tests in the first indicator then mechanically inflated the result of the calculation. . The positivity rate has dropped drastically. The reason this time comes from the counting of negative tests: if the same person has carried out several tests within 60 days and these are negative, each of them is now counted. Previously, if a person tested negative several times in a row within 60 days, only the first test was counted. It was only in the event of a positive test that his situation changed.
Public Health France explained in a press release that this new method of calculation proved to be more precise because it takes into account the “prevalence of the virus in the population tested”. “Today, as the epidemic continues, it is common for the same person to carry out several tests, especially when the previous ones were negative. In addition, knowledge has evolved and the risk of reinfection, which today is considered very low but possible after 60 days, must be able to be identified”, wrote the health agency at the time.