As many people are impatiently waiting for the new year, hoping to be able to move on, head of France’s Scientific Committee Jean-François Delfraissy urges the French to remain “extremely careful three to six more months”.
In an interview with Le Parisien this December 16, 2020, he urges them to remain very cautious amid the Covid-19 health crisis, but considers the epidemic to end “by summer or fall 2021” thanks to vaccine. “Science is moving forward, in silence, but it is” he says. As for vaccine, Jean-François Delfraissy says “there are still questions, the length of the immune response and side effects we will have to monitor very thoroughly”. According to the president of the Scientific Committee, “it is not urgent to immune the entire France” and it “will take up to late April or even May to immune the 22 million French the most at risk” he adds.
And what about a possible third wave in France? Jean-François Delfraissy does not rule out this scenario. “Could this resurgence occur by mid-January or later? The answer is yes, the pattern has not changed, the virus will keep on spreading over the course of winter” he explains. He adds: “the arrival of vaccines will have no an impact during the first quarter of 2021 and very little during the second. The beginning of the year will not be different from 2020” but we are “holding tight” he says.
