Another lockdown sounds ineluctable. Yesterday, as JDD said that president Emmanuel Macron was likely to address the country this Wednesday January 27, president of the Scientific Committee Delfraissy has addressed the health situation in France on January 24 on BFMTV.
He says that “if we continue doing nothing, we’ll end up in a difficult condition by mid-March”, adding that “lockdown probably has to be instated”. Interviewed on many occasions on the kind of lockdown that should be implemented in the country, the president of the Committee preferred evading the issue, saying it was a political call.
So, what will the French government decide? Invited on France 3, government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said no decision was made and “the coming days will be crucial”. But “out of principle, all scenarios are on the table” he said.
Still on BFMTV, Delfraissy did not hide he was worried about the surge of the UK, South-African and Brazilian variants. “These variants are like a second pandemic. And I weigh my words. […] If the increasing curve of the virus and the UK variant confirms, it is a crucial vigilance issue” he said. “We cannot do anything to prevent it from spreading”.
The head of the Scientific Committee also spoke about other leads in order to slow the spread of the virus, such as fitting school break. “We can think about adapting school break, perhaps for another week, or by bringing them together” he explained. “We could find ourselves with a sort of lockdown with a break that could halt the spread of the virus” he added. For the record, the Minister of the Education recently stated that the Winter break “will go as planned”.
Last but not least, even though Olivier Véran affirmed the government was able to vaccinate 70 million people by late August, Delfraissy does not seem to agree. He says: “it will take time, a lot of time, by the end of summer, we’d have vaccinated 40% of the French population, not more”.
