This lockdown exit is still hard to swallow for many doctors and scientists as it could lead to a Covid epidemic surge… 23 doctors and searchers – led by epidemiology and public health professor Mahmoud Zureik – have called into question the upcoming lockdown exit scheme including the May 19’s phase allowing the reopening of some places of life in an opinion’s column published this Sunday May 9, 2021 in JDD, stating the progressive easing of restrictions was “guided by political intentions more than it is health-oriented”.
They go on to explain that “according to Institut Pasteur, sole an optimistic scenario could prevent a new epidemic surge in the summer”. What doctors and searchers who signed the column reproach is the Head of State takes the problem the wrong way, by choosing to curb the epidemic rather than anticipating the evolution with measures instated ahead: “rather than coming up with a goal to reach, such as the threshold of 5,000 new cases per day (…) the presidential announcements officialize an ‘emergency curbing’ or ‘new lockdown’ set at 400 new cases for 100,000 inhabitants against 250 before, and paired with criteria as unclear as the ‘sharp increase in the incidence rate’ or the ‘threat of seeing services overcrowded’”, they say.
They go on: “We attend the officialization of moving from active managing to passive managing of the epidemic. This is a bold bet, with a particularly high threshold and not meeting controlling goals”. They also called for “instating a new nationwide protocol setting clear thresholds, triggering automatic measures, decided and debated ahead of time” as soon as possible. A new protocol that has to be “paired with bold communication, informing the population in detail about contaminations happening for most of it, in the air we breathe”.
For the record, weeks ago several epidemiologists and doctors – as pessimistic about the calendar – urged the government to be cautious including Catherine Hill, Dominique Costagliola, Karine Lacombe, as well as Pr. Jean-François Timsit.
