Hospital pressure due to Covid-19 has continued to increase in the past 24 hours, with more than 19,000 hospitalized patients including more than 3,500 serious cases in critical care, according to figures released Sunday by Public Health France.
At the start of 2022, French hospitals are welcoming a total of 19,043 Covid patients, against 18,811 the day before. In 24 hours, they admitted 652 new patients, a figure down from the previous two days (1,102 on Saturday and 1,928 on New Year’s Eve).
Critical care services, which treat the most severe forms of the disease, are caring for 3,572 patients (3,560 on Saturday), including 101 new admissions. This closely watched indicator has continued to increase since the start of the fifth wave of the epidemic in France, in November 2021.
It had peaked at 6,000 patients in the third wave, in April 2021, and 7,000 in the first. For now, the authorities do not know what will be the impact on hospitalizations of the outbreak of infections due to the new variant Omicron, very contagious.
“There are two weeks to three weeks of delay” between contaminations and hospitalizations, recalled Sunday the infectious disease specialist Eric Caumes.
According to epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet, member of the Scientific Council, “the peak in the number of cases should peak in mid-January” and “the hospital peak could take place a week later”.
On the side of contaminations, the figures for this Sunday (58,432) are not significant, few people being tested on the weekend, which is moreover a January 1 holiday.
But on average over the last seven days, more than 160,000 people have been infected, more than double the number of a week ago. On Wednesday and Thursday, the number of cases exceeded 200,000 per day in the country, a record.
And the positivity rate, which relates the number of cases to that of tests, climbs to 15.8% (against 8% a week ago).
In 24 hours, 91 people were swept away by the Covid, bringing the total death toll to 123,942 since the start of the epidemic.
Since the start of the vaccination campaign, 76.8% of French people have been fully vaccinated (51,763,970 people), and 78.5% have received at least one injection (52,924,529 people), said the Directorate General of health (DGS).
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