Paris | The peak of the second wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in France has probably been crossed, said the health agency Public Health France (SpF) on Friday, which however calls for maintaining “preventive measures”.
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“Even if the indicators remain at high levels, their observation suggests that the epidemic peak of the second wave has been crossed”, explained the health agency in a statement accompanying the publication of its weekly epidemiological update.
According to Public Health France, “the current results show a clear decrease in all indicators, more marked in the first metropolises placed under curfew”.
The first curfews had started on October 17 in certain metropolises (including Paris, Lyon or Marseille), at the time when the All Saints’ Day holidays began in France. The second round of curfews began in other cities (including Nice) on October 24. Then the confinement took effect throughout France from October 30.
For the week of November 9 to 15, we observe a simultaneous drop in the number of new confirmed cases of contamination (-40%), hospitalizations (-13%) and intensive care admissions (-9%).
The death toll “seems to stabilize for the first time after several weeks of increase”: it rose to 3,756 for the week of November 9 to 15, against 3,817 the previous one.
It is also “the first time” since the start of the second wave that hospitalizations and admissions in intensive care have decreased from one week to another, according to SpF: 17,390 against 19,940 the previous week for the first, and 2,761 against 3,037 for the second.
The positivity rate for RT-PCR tests (proportion of the number of positive cases out of the total number of people tested) is declining (16.2% compared to 19.7%).
However, “the maintenance of preventive measures remains relevant,” insists Public Health France: “These encouraging results (…) should not make us forget that while waiting for treatments and vaccines, the only means to slow down the epidemic and reducing its impact on the healthcare system and mortality remain the adoption of individual preventive measures, associated with collective measures ”.
Since the start of the epidemic in March in France, 47,127 Covid-19 patients have died in hospital or in institutions for the elderly, a toll that continues to progress with more than 400 deaths per day in hospital.