"We are in a risky situation" facing the Covid-19, warned Olivier Véran in an interview with the Journal du dimanche. The Minister of Health fears contamination from the youngest to the older and therefore more fragile people.
The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, warns, Sunday, August 23 in an interview in the Journal du dimanche, against "a risky situation" in the face of Covid-19 in France. On Saturday, 3,602 new positive diagnoses were recorded, according to health authorities. Thursday and Friday, 4,771 and 4,586 new cases had been recorded.
The epidemic "has never stopped", recalls Olivier Véran. "It was only checked during the confinement and then the progressive deconfinement." "The risk," he insists, "is that after gently removing the lid from the pot, the water will boil again."
"The virus circulates four times more among those under 40 than among those over 65," said the minister. However, he adds, "if the circulation of the virus still accelerates among the youngest, they could infect the elderly, who more often contract more serious forms of the disease".
"We must at all costs avoid this situation which would put our health system under strain and would be extremely problematic", he insists.
According to the minister, "no scientific argument comes to support" the theory of a "less dangerous" virus. "The Covid which is spreading is the same as the one which claimed the lives of 30,000 French people. Only the profile of the patients has changed, younger and therefore less symptomatic."
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France can accommodate "up to 29,000 patients in intensive care"
Regarding the spread of the virus, the minister indicates that "the majority of transmissions now take place in festive situations of the youngest, where barrier gestures are not respected".
In the Bouches-du-Rhône, one of the eight departments where the level of vulnerability is high, "where there are 188 new cases per 100,000 people aged 20 to 40, we have seen for three weeks that positive tests have increased among seniors ", he points out. "The passage between the public is already done. And there is once again an increase in admissions to hospitalization and intensive care."
"New measures will be taken quickly" in this department, he announced, specifying that the Prime Minister had held a meeting with the ministers concerned on this subject.
Olivier Véran wanted to be reassuring about the reception capacities of hospitals by affirming that "we are capable of accommodating up to 29,000 patients in intensive care". "We had a total of 17,000 times in intensive care during the epidemic wave of spring," he recalls.
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