There is no longer any doubt, the coronavirus has settled in the Alsatian population and is making itself more and more noticed there. Its expansion is obvious if we compare two figures.
The first is the accumulation of positive tests in Alsace over seven days, for the period stopped on October 18: 3,075 people were then declared to be carriers of the Covid according to the counts of the Regional Health Agency – for more than two thirds in the Bas-Rhin.
Over the seven-day period ending October 24, the figure was 6,663 confirmed cases in the region. Between these two deadlines, the increase is therefore 116%. The Bas-Rhin is the most affected, with an increase of + 128%, which is not so surprising: the number of screenings reported to the population has increased by half in this department between the two dates. However, the ARS does not hide the importance of the screening rate on the volume of cases counted: “At an equivalent level of viral circulation, the number of new cases diagnosed will be greater in a territory where the number of tests is greater. “.
In the Haut-Rhin, the number of tests also changed between October 18 and 24, but only by just over 20%. The departmental detection rate remains proportionally much lower than that of Bas-Rhin, by around one third. If the Haut-Rhin tested as much as the Bas-Rhin, its incidence rate would necessarily suffer. However, it already increases by 87% on October 24, compared to the same figure on October 18.
With a similar screening level in Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin would be beyond the maximum alert set at a threshold of 250. As its official rate of contamination of people over 65 years of age already exceeds the critical threshold of 100 per group of 100,000 seniors (154 to be exact), it will fulfill in the short term, barring a miraculous reversal of the curves, criteria used elsewhere in the Bas-Rhin to decide on a curfew.
438 positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants
Until recent days, the two departments of the Rhine have experienced a fairly similar slope in the increase in positive cases. Haut-Rhin has an advantage. It is placed, on the sharply rising curve of proven contaminations, clearly behind the Bas-Rhin: it is currently located where the Bas-Rhin was located about ten days ago. The latter also sees its figures progressing even faster recently, boosted by the recent extension of screening operations (36,000 Bas-Rhinois were tested in seven days, against 15,000 Haut-Rhinois). As a result, the incidence rates remain more favorable in the Haut-Rhin: 223 positive cases per 100,000 people as of October 24, against nearly double in the Bas-Rhin on the same date, with 438 positive per 100 000. The national average is 383 (+ 52% between October 18 and 24).
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Trompe-l’œil figures in Mulhouse?
The north of Alsace is unfavorably influenced by the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg, whose incidence rate soars to 569 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. From 1,290 positive residents on October 18, it rose to 2,827 on October 24, more than double (cumulated over seven rolling days). The agglomeration of Mulhouse is doing much better a priori with “only” 546 cases diagnosed as of October 24 over seven days, but this is compared to a number of tests nearly four times lower than that actually carried out in Strasbourg! (5,300 in Mulhouse over seven days against… 19,000 in Strasbourg).
In a very not very intuitive way, the urban area of Mulhouse pulls the incidence rate of Haut-Rhin downwards: this rate is 200 positives per 100,000 inhabitants in the Mulhouse metropolitan area, one tenth lower than that of the whole department. It must be said that, for the same screening level, the positivity rate in Mulhouse (10%) is also lower than that of the whole of Haut-Rhin (11.5%). In Strasbourg, we reach 15%: out of six people tested, one is positive!
Seven deaths added up in one day in Alsace
Note that hospitalizations are progressing more and more clearly in the Bas-Rhin, with 33 entries for the single day of Monday. In the Haut-Rhin, the daily figure rose to a dozen newly hospitalized patients.
During the day Monday, seven deaths were reported in Alsace due to Covid (which may be due to a catch-up over the weekend), a sad figure in any case that we had not seen for a long time.
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