The incidence rate has just exceeded an alert threshold in France. An increase in the spread of the novel Coronavirus is expected by Arnaud Fontanet, member of the Scientific Council and researcher at the Pasteur Institute.
In an interview with French weekly JDD, he explained this by “the weather” and the decline in vaccine effectiveness over time. In fact, a Swedish study showed that it had declined to zero.
On 23 October 75,7 percent of French people had received at least one injection of vaccine (more than 51 million) and 73,9 percent had had two shots (more than 49,8 million), according to the Ministry of Solidarity and Health. But in an interview given on October 23 to the Journal du Dimanche (JDD), Arnaud Fontanet, professor at the Pasteur Institute and member of the Scientific Council, admitted that he expected a “continuation of the rise in contamination”.
“With nearly 5000 cases per day, France is in an intermediate situation: it is a moderate epidemic recovery. The R [number of people infected by a positive case, editor’s note] has just crossed the threshold of 1. But, be careful, the trend will be clearer in two or three weeks because the change in our testing practices blurs the picture. We have to wait a bit to be able to identify a trend.”
According to him, two factors are involved: “the weather and the decline in the effectiveness of vaccines against infection.”