A new wave seems to be emerging on the horizon. The week of June 6 to 12, nearly 1.3 million PCR and antigen tests were validated, specifies the statistics department (Drees) in a press release.
This is 5% more than the previous week, despite Whit Monday, and 23% more than Ascension week, during which just over a million tests were recorded, the highest level. low since the record reached in January (more than 12 million).
This rebound in screenings accompanies a more pronounced epidemic recovery. Falling to less than 18,000 daily cases at the end of May, the rate of contamination (on average over 7 days) rose to more than 30,000 on June 12 and exceeded 38,000 on Wednesday, according to data from Public Health France compiled by the CovidTracker site.
“The epidemic curve is exponential in France, it looks like a new wave which seems to be led by (the) new BA.4 and BA.5 variants of Omicron”, observed epidemiologist Antoine Flahault on Wednesday on FranceInfo. He pointed out that the trend is currently the same “in almost all Western European countries”.
The impact on hospitals remains uncertain, even if the reflux of “Covid patients” has slowed down for a week. Their number had fallen below 14,000 on Wednesday (against more than 25,000 during the last peak in April), including just under 850 in critical care.
For its part, the government “is not talking about a wave” at this stage, but “remains extremely vigilant”, indicated its spokeswoman Olivia Grégoire on Tuesday, announcing “a communication in the Council of Ministers on June 22” on the measures that the executive intends to maintain after the end of the exit regime from the state of health emergency, scheduled for July 31.
