His hobby, following the evolution of Covid-19 around the world and the strategies to counter it. For Antoine Flahault, epidemiologist and director of the Institute of Global Health in Geneva, Switzerland, quarantine is essential but beware of holes in the French racket …
What is the point of a quarantine?
ANTOINE FLAHAULT. To create an airlock in which the virus will be able to express itself, rather than going to do so in the population. A telling example: recently, there was a flight from New Delhi to Hong Kong. On arrival, the passengers were quarantined for 21 days. In the twelfth, 49 tested positive! Thanks to strict isolation, the worst was avoided.
On the twelfth day? The measure in France provides for “only” ten …
It’s always better than nothing. The average incubation time for the virus is five days, but it can be up to fourteen. Today, there is nothing to indicate that variants are a game-changer. A ten-day quarantine is an acceptable compromise. She permits to catch the maximum possible positive cases, probably around 90 to 95%.
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Confinement in hotels, meal trays… Asia is stricter than us. Quarantine French-style can she walk?
If it is well respected, the measure works. But France is not an island! It belongs to the Schengen area, with free movement of people. There is a risk if foreign travelers pass, for example, through places where there is no quarantine. So far, isolation is the very big hole in the racket of the pandemic response in the West, compared to Asia or the Pacific. They know how to do it. In Europe, one country is nearly there: Switzerland. The fines are very high, very dissuasive, and the ban on going out is total.
With us, outings are possible from 10 am to noon, said the Minister of the Interior. Good idea ?
This is nonsense! It’s two hours when the virus is let out. You have to have the courage to go to the end of the logic and create a complete airlock. Australia is doing it and it cannot be said to be a dictatorship. As long as there is no universal vaccination, caution must be taken. The slightest case can spread like wildfire through episodes of “superpropagation”.
This happened with the Indian variant, in a bus transporting students from Paris airport in Belgium …
Yes, and this shows that we cannot afford to let in variants, at the risk of generating an epidemic. “Superpropagation” is a key issue. Understand: 70% of those infected transmit the virus to zero other people. 20% to one. Clearly, it is the remaining 10% who are leading the dance by advancing the epidemic exponentially. Why them? Not by genetic trait, but because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, in a closed bus, without a mask, battery when their contagiousness is the strongest …
How to be sure that the Indian variant is not already in France?
We can’t because we don’t sequence 100% of positive tests. The question with this variant is: can it compete with the British, today the majority in the world? It is possible, because this is what seems to be happening in India where the British were already very established. If this is confirmed, the entry of the Indian variant on French soil would be very bad news.
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