What are specialists thinking about the future of the pandemic? As the Holidays are over, this Monday January 4, 2021, epidemiologist and Scientific Committee member Arnaud Fontanet was interviewed by France Info. And his assessment is final: he says “12% of the French have been infected since the pandemic broke out” naming “8 million people”.
According to the doctor, the situation is serious. He says that “each wave leads to 5% of people infected, 30,000 deaths every time”. According to Fontanet, the only viable short-term solution: “vaccine is the only thing that will enable us to get 67% of the population immune with an acceptable death toll”. So far, when it comes to vaccine, the government keeps on piling up mistakes.
VIDEO. Covid-19 : "On ne sortira de cet enfer que quand on aura atteint l'immunité collective" et "ce sera par le vaccin", estime le professeur Arnaud Fontanethttps://t.co/RJEmPpblbd pic.twitter.com/gFNNGPKdHE
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) January 4, 2021
Tweet reads: “VIDEO. Covid-19: “We will only make out this hell once we’ll reach herd immunity” and “it will be through vaccine” professor Arnaud Fontanet says”
By the way, the member of the Scientific Committee tries to reassure people as to delays reported during the vaccine campaign. “It’s sure, it started very slowly” Fontanet admits, before saying that “the reach deadline is when we’ll get 5 to 10 million people vaccinated by the end of March”. He says, “we’ll get an impact on the spread of the virus”. But in other countries such as the United-Kingdom, they have been making sharp progresses to vaccinate people, and France is lagging behind.
But the doctor says people should not be worried. “It’s not made on purpose. The choice has been to go to nursing homes first have a third of people died there” Fontanet says. “This is a difficult choice, because they are fragile patients with a long logistical process to organize” the doctor explains, before adding that “if we manage to protect nursing homes, we’ll sharply reduce the virus mortality”.
And what about cultural facilities, that are still closed since the second lockdown and the third wave of the epidemic? “We are wondering about cultural facilities, but these matters will only be addressed when the hospitalization toll truly decreases. The virus spread rate is currently too high to ease restrictions off” Fontanet explains. While waiting for the hospitalization rate to decrease, he reminds that “mask protects, ventilation likely plays a major part as well”.
