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France is experiencing an “exponential progression of transmission” of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as described by the French Ministry of Health, after the country recorded the highest number of daily infections on Friday since March 31, when it was in the most critical phase of the pandemic.
The number of new cases has increased substantially during the month of August, especially in the last three days: 6111 infections on Thursday, 7379 on Friday and 5453 this Saturday.
Faced with this scenario, the French government admits having to close the country again, a scenario that President Emmanuel Macron wants to avoid, but does not completely rule out. “We are doing everything possible to avoid another lockdown, in particular a nationwide lockdown,” Macron said.
So far, the rapid growth of new coronavirus cases has not been accompanied by a similar increase in deaths or hospitalizations: The government announced 20 deaths on Friday and six more on Saturday, and there are 4,530 people hospitalized, 400 in intensive care.
According to the The Guardian, there has been an increase in infected people showing symptoms of covid-19, while in other weeks mostly asymptomatic cases were reported. However, health authorities report that the increase in cases continues to occur mainly among young adults and many do not have symptoms.
On Thursday, at a press conference, the French Government admitted that the growth in the number of infected people cannot be explained only by the greater number of tests carried out – according to the Europe 1 radio, in mid-March, approximately five thousand were carried out. tests per day, today there are 90 thousand.
With the summer holidays coming to an end, thousands of French people will go back to work next week, and wearing a mask will be mandatory in the workplace. Also, next Tuesday, more than 12 million children will go back to school, the first time in five months that this has happened to most of them.
To avoid a second lockdown in France, which ended in May after eight weeks of strict measures, the use of a mask is mandatory in all public spaces, including abroad, in Paris, with Marseille and Strasbourg also adopting the measure.
With the substantial increase in new infections in recent days, healthcare professionals fear a second wave, with unpredictable consequences.
“We must imagine a kind of snowball. The lower it goes, the more snow it accumulates and the bigger it gets. If we do nothing, it will be huge, an avalanche will come and we will have to face the famous second wave that we learned about a while ago ”, Matthieu Calafiore, director of the department of general medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Lille, told Europe 1 . .
