COVID-19 FRANCE. The number of coronavirus cases in France fell back below 50,000 in the balance sheet for this Sunday, December 19, but the 7-day average and the incidence rate are still rising sharply, preventing for the moment from confirming that a peak passed in this 5th wave …
The coronavirus epidemic in France has further progressed by 48,473 additional cases according to the results of December 19, 2021. This is 10,063 cases less than the day before but still and still more than a week ago (+4625 by compared to last Sunday). The question of the peak (at least for the Delta variant), is always asked. The 7-day average goes to 52,451 cases recorded daily against 51,790 the day before and the incidence rate to 530.27 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in France currently (526.45 the day before).
In hospitals, there were 15,528 patients hospitalized for Covid-19 (up 158 compared to the previous day) while 2,936 people were in intensive care (+3). In 24 hours, 485 patients were admitted to hospital, 331 less than the day before and 13 more compared to last Sunday. 91 intensive care admissions were recorded, 99 less than the day before and 20 less than last Sunday. The number of deaths recorded in 24 hours at the hospital was 75 deaths (excluding nursing homes), 10 less than the day before and 27 more than last Sunday.
Here is the latest official data available on Covid-19 in France according to the daily reports of Public health France and of Data.gouv, based on data from SI-DEP tests, hospital data and feedback from medico-social establishments, including nursing homes. Many details are necessary to fully understand these figures. They are detailed below the table:
Here is the number of cases of Covid-19, deaths, hospitalizations, resuscitations and healings observed more or less compared to the previous report (generally the day before). Latest data available in France according to the daily reports from Public Health France and Data.gouv:
PRECISION : During the updates of Monday 6 and Monday 13 December 2021, Data.gouv showed a drop in the number of cases as well as a drop in the number of deaths in nursing homes. Obviously abnormal data and partly corrected in the table above.
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New cases of covid, positivity rate of tests, proportion of the population tested … Internet users suggest that you consult the data on the evolution of the epidemic in your town free of charge. See
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 hospital and total deaths and the number of returns home, assimilated to cures.
For each graph, the curve represents the total (eg: total of cases, current hospitalizations) while the bars correspond to daily changes (balances of hospitalizations each day, new deaths, etc.).
Details on the number of cases: Public Health France specifies that “the data can be very variable depending on the screening activities (decrease in activities on weekends for example, mechanically lowering the number of cases on Monday) and the deadlines for rendering results” (generally 24 at 48 hours). Several changes in the method of counting positive tests could also have disturbed the counting of cases:
- 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 changed considerably. From a few thousand tests at the very start of the epidemic, France has increased to more than 1 million tests each week then to 2 million at the beginning 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, putting aside all patients with no or little symptomatic. The actual number of Covid-19 cases in France was therefore quite significantly higher than the estimated number of confirmed cases during this period.
- As of mid-November 2020, the number of positive tests includes, in addition to PCR tests, the results of antigen tests.
- A correction of duplicates was made by public health France on May 20, 2021. While there were more than 5.9 million cases in France since the start of the epidemic, this figure has been 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.
Clarification on hospitalizations: We must clearly distinguish here the evolution of the total number of patients hospitalized at an instant T and new hospitalizations, in other words new admissions to the hospital each day (gross). In one case, it is a balance, which takes into account admissions, but also discharges from the hospital (cures or death). In the other, we only talk about new admissions to the hospital or intensive care unit for Covid over a day. On weekends, hospital data is sometimes extracted from the Geodes site of Public Health France and are not consolidated data.
Clarification on the number of deaths: Since May 2020, Public Health France no longer updates the nursing home report on a daily basis. This record was reassembled every week at the end of the summer, 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 bias the graphs. At the request of several readers, since November 13, 2020, we again display the updates of deaths in nursing homes (dark gray bars) which causes artificial peaks during the updates. Errors and data corrections have also been reported on several occasions by Public Health France since mid-March 2020, sometimes leading to overestimations generally followed by negative trends in the number of deaths.
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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 number of effective reproductions 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 resuscitation 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 to be 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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Details on the positivity rate and the incidence rate: Public Health France changed its method of calculation on 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 they are negative, each of them is now counted. Previously, if a person tested negative multiple times in a row within 60 days, only the first test was counted. It was only when he tested positive 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 perform several tests, especially when the previous ones were negative. In addition, knowledge has evolved and the risk of reinfection, which is today considered very weak but possible after 60 days, must be able to be identified “, then wrote the health agency.