By David Saint-Sernin
Published on
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An incidence rate with 700 positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants, more than three times the national average (190 per 100,000 inhabitants, editor’s note). A positivity rate of 10%, against around 6% for the whole of France (and 5.2 in Haute-Garonne). All driven by the growing distribution of the British variant.
In Nice, and more broadly in the Alpes-Maritimes, after several days of discussions, and faced with the deterioration of the health situation, the authorities have decided to confine certain municipalities on the coast of the Alpes-Maritimes, this for the next two weekends .
A situation that is far more worrying than in Toulouse, even if the current period and in particular the spread of variants throughout France, calls for caution. Clearly, Toulouse is not Nice but the current period, synonymous with an in-between, between the weakening of the 2020 strain of Covid and its gradual replacement by the English, South African and Brazilian strains, does not allow us to consider a very specific scenario for the weeks to come in the Pink City.
Jacques Izopet, head of the virology department at the Toulouse University Hospital, tells us more about the circulation of variants in the Toulouse region and Haute-Garonne. And what it could produce on our territory.
Is the epidemic under control in Toulouse?
Clearly, Haute-Garonne has been at a high level of virus circulation, this for several weeks. The numbers have risen steadily since the start of January before leveling off. With an incidence rate of 219.7, the metropolis of Toulouse is located far from Nice. However, is this current stability a pledge of control of the epidemic or only a transition phase before a possible explosion of the virus under the pressure of variants?
For Jacques Izopet, “the epidemiological context is working at full capacity” for the moment:
Barrier measures make it possible to control the spread of the virus. We must continue. For the moment, the dynamics are that observed in the autumn in England where there were initially very low percentages of traffic. There, there was then an explosion because the barrier measures were not applied. We hope to escape it here by strictly maintaining these barrier gestures.
In what proportion do the variants circulate?
The three variants, English, South African and Brazilian, are already circulating in the territory. And we are witnessing a rise in power of the English variant according to Jacques Izopet:
“We observe a replacement of one virus population by another. If there is heterogeneity in Occitania, in the western part of the region, 50% to 60% of positive tests correspond to the British variant, which is much more than the national average (37%). This proportion is much less important for the other two variants: the proportion of cases of South African or Brazilian variants is between 1 and 2% on our territory against 5% on the national territory ”.
What to expect
As has often been the case since the start of the epidemic, the same prognosis is in order: “the coming days will be decisive”, considers Jacques Izopet.
He pursues :
“We cannot be completely reassured or reassuring. We hope that the situation will improve by remaining on a lower incidence. The unknown is that we do not know how the proportion of South African and Brazilian variants will evolve, which have a greater ease in escaping the vaccine’s antibodies. Beyond transmissibility, if this proportion of these two variants were to increase in our territory, it is the vaccine strategy that would then have to be reconsidered ”.
Race against time
In Haute-Garonne, unlike Nice, the time has not come for local containment, but the race against variants has begun with the now well-known “test, trace, isolate”. A holy trinity in the fight against covid which will have to be more efficient than in 2020, otherwise the South African and Brazilian variants (or others even more reluctant to vaccines) will manage to spread before the vaccination campaign current has been able to stem the epidemic dynamic.
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