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PARIS: The COVID-19 virus is spreading faster than during its initial outbreak in the spring, French government scientific adviser Arnaud Fontanet said on Friday (23 October) in one of the harshest warnings yet about the scale of disease resurgence in Europe. .
“The virus is circulating faster … The resurgence of the pandemic began in August,” Fontanet, an epidemiologist, told BFM TV, adding that the fight against the disease would be a “marathon.”
He spoke the day after France posted a record 41,622 daily counts of new COVID-19 infections, making the country a bit shy, at 999,043, out of a million cases. France will exceed that threshold this Friday, becoming the second Western European country to do so after Spain.
Like many other European countries facing a further increase in the number of cases since the beginning of September, France has increased restrictions to contain the disease, announcing on Thursday an extension of the curfew, initially established in nine cities, including Paris. , to more than two thirds of its population.
READ: France extends curfew as second wave of COVID-19 increases in Europe
Fontanet said French authorities had managed to get the virus under control at the end of June, adding that the number of hospitalizations that remained low until the end of August had given a false sense of security even though cases were already increasing at that time. .
“And then there was a cold week in September and all the indicators went wrong again across Europe. The virus spreads better in the cold because we live further inside,” he said.
After reaching a high of 32,292 on April 14, when France was in the midst of one of the tightest closures in Europe, COVID-19 hospitalizations fell to a low of 4,530 on August 29. After rising daily by more than 700 for the past four days, the tally now stands at 14,032, a level not seen since early June.
“Hospitals and medical personnel will find themselves in a situation that they already knew about,” Fontanet said, referring to the peak from late March to early April, when the hospital system was on the brink of collapse.
“We have many tools to protect ourselves against the virus, but we are facing a difficult period,” he added, echoing Prime Minister Jean Castex, who predicted a “tough November” in detailing the new curfew measures.
Like other medical experts, Fontanet said it takes about two weeks for the containment measures to have any impact.
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