Weekly French Covid Thread

A good week. The 5th (or some say 6th) wave of Covid is now falling fast.
Infections – 98.9% Omicron – have dropped by one fifth in 7 days.
They are still averaging 274,352 a day, however. Acute cases and deaths, though stable, remain very high. 1/10
The government started to remove social restrictions, as planned, on Wed of this week. No more limits on numbers in stadiums, theatres etc. No more compulsory home working or masks outdoors. From 16 Feb, clubs can reopen. Standing in bars and eating on trains can resume. 2/10
The health minister Olivier Véran said yesterday: “the worst is behind us”. Rules on testing in schools would probably be eased from next week, he said. The vaccine pass may be scrapped before its promised end in July.
Hmm... just before the April elections? 3/10
Overall, it appears that the government/Macron will emerge from the 5/6th wave pretty well. Their decisions, much criticised by experts, to refuse a lock down before Christmas and to give an early timetable for removal of controls last month have largely been vindicated. 4/10
I’d only say that the death rate remains disturbingly high at 265 a day, up 3% in a week. Contrary to what I said last week, it appears that many of these deaths are victims of Omicron, not Delta. They are mostly over 70 and disproportionately unvaccinated. 5/10
Could lives have been saved by a lock-down? More to the point, I think, lives could have been saved by a higher rate of vaccination/booster jabbing among the over-80s. This remains France’s achilles heel. Over 80’s are the least-vaxxed adult age tranche at just over 90%. 6/10
Other stats this week:
As of last night there were “only” 3,643 C19 cases in acute care, 1% down on last week. Daily intake to acute care is, however 6% up. Deaths, 3% up at 265 a day, are levelling off but still very high.
7/10
There were 274,352 new cases yesterday, bringing the weekly average down to 289,231. Some of this decline may be down to reduced testing but Omicron definitely appears to be receding.
8/10
Over 54m French people have now been first vaccinated, 80.2% of the population. Over 36m have been booster-jabbed but talk of Omicron’s “mildness” etc has reduced third-vaxxing to less than 200,000 a day, way behind the target.
It’s not necessarily so mild for us oldies.
9/10
Hang in there. 10/ 10

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More from @john_lichfield

Jan 21
Weekly French Covid Thread

A confusing week. Omicron infections have rocketed again – partly perhaps because a sub-variant of “O” has invaded France.
Nonetheless, the government has announced a timetable for gradual relaxation of social protections from 2 Feb.

1/12
The shedding of controls, such as working-from-home and max numbers for restos etc, may seem risky with cases running at 400,000+ a day for last 3 days. It’s based on accumulating evidence that Omicron is much less dangerous than other versions of C19. It's also electoral.
2/12
The electoral motive is not just my assessment. (1st round of voting in Pres election is 79 days away). Govt officials speak of a need to “give Fr people” a perspective that restrictions are about to decline. Pr. Macron will formally enter the race soon – prob early Feb. 3/12
Read 12 tweets
Jan 14
Weekly French Covid Thread
The Omicron pandemic is raging but rising less rapidly; Delta is declining slowly (see Covidtracker graphic). Overall, there are reasons to hope that a plateau will be reached next week. In France as elsewhere, Omicron is causing less acute illness 1/10
Omicron is now 90% of new cases in France, up from 80% last week. Together the variants are producing an average of 293,867 cases a day – a 47% increase on last week, after 64% the week before. But (good news alert) acute care and deaths are “only” 5% and 3% up.
2/10
There is some push-back against Fr govt's handling of the pandemic. Teachers went on strike against school mask/testing rules and won concessions. The Senate has delayed the move from “health pass” to vaccine pass. Outdoor masks in Paris have been struck down by a tribunal. 3/10
Read 10 tweets
Jan 12
The public prosecutor for the Annecy area says she is surprised by the global media reaction to the announcement that a man has been arrested for questioning for the 9 years old al-Hilli murders. Surprised? Really? 1/2

ledauphine.com/faits-divers-j…
Prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis says it's an arrest like many others. "No cause to get excited. We're going to say nothing about the person being questioned. We've already had one suicide after an arrest in this case...I will give no clue to the person's identity or address." 2/2
The arrested man has been identified by his lawyer as a motorcyclist who was questioned in 2015, three years after the killings, and cleared of suspicion at the time. Now gendarmerie detectives want to clear up discrepancies in his story.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 7
First weekly French Covid Thread of 2022

Omicron is now 80% of new cases in France and producing (in alliance with the declining Delta wave) an average of 200,000 cases a day – a 64% increase in a week. As the graphic shows, this is a “wave on top of a wave”. 1/15
So far, the explosion of mostly Omicron cases – over 300,000 a day on Tues and Wed, 260,000+ yesterday – is NOT causing an explosion of very acute cases or deaths. Hospital admissions are 35.3% up but acute care is “only” 6.3% up and deaths are “only” 14.5% up. 2/15
The government says the "ordinary" hospital cases are partly Omicron/partly Delta. But the acute cases and deaths are thought to be entirely Delta. It will be another week or so before we know if the avalanche of Omicron cases is producing a sharp spike in serious illness. 3/15
Read 15 tweets
Dec 31, 2021
Last French Covid Thread of 2021

I spoke last week of a very big Omicron wave about to crash onto France. That wave is upon us. There have been over 200,000 new cases in each of the last two days, bringing the 7-day average to 121,566, up more than 125% in a week. 1/15
The government now reckons that almost two in three - 62.3% - of those new cases are the Omicron variant, compared to 1 in 3 a week ago. The Delta strain (in terms of new cases) will be wiped out in Fr in a few days’ time. Good news or bad news? It’s still uncertain. 2/15
President Macron is gambling (cautiously) that Omicron will prove to be aggressive (in spread) but relatively benign (in acute sickness/deaths). Drastic measures to reduce social mixing (such as curfews) were rejected on Monday in favour of a raft of smaller ones. 3/15
Read 15 tweets
Dec 24, 2021
Weekly French Covid Thread (one day early)

A worrying week and a confusing one. Lots of mixed signals from the French government. “New cases are the worst since the pandemic began…BUT unlike neighbouring countries, we plan no drastic new measures”. Hmm. 1/15
Imagine a very big wave crashing onto a beach and swallowing another big wave cresting ahead of it. That is roughly where we are in France this Christmas. There was an all-time record of 91,608 new cases yesterday – 32% of which MAY be the new Omicron variant. 2/15
Because France has chosen not to invest in rapid ways of variant-spotting, educated guess-work is needed to decide the proportion of O. cases. This week almost 1 in 3 of cases - 32% - lacked the L452R mutation present in Delta. They can therefore be presumed to be Omicron. 3/15
Read 15 tweets

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