People now anticipate the Thursday afternoon press briefing from the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, like the Greeks awaited the oracle of Delphi. Poor guy…
In fact, no new restrictions are in sight. Olivier Véran did not announce any changes regarding the curfew or local lockdowns. However, he stated: “If the epidemic continues at this level and pace (…), then we will take all necessary measures” to curb infections.
The situation remains very heterogeneous from one region to another. Three regions continue to be the focus of concerns: Hauts-de-France, Île-de-France, and PACA. The threshold of 4,000 COVID-19 patients in intensive care was again exceeded on Thursday, the minister noted. This is a first since the end of 2020.
As we know, the coastline of the Alpes-Maritimes will be confined for the third consecutive weekend. The request from the Mayor of Nice to extend the “freedom” time from one to three hours was not followed up by the prefecture. It was expected, but Christian Estrosi can still tell his constituents that he tried.
Aside from that, we received confirmation that the government strategy is focused on the vaccination campaign: 4,544,897 people have received a first dose of the vaccine in France, according to data published by Santé publique France today. Among them, 2,164,978 have received a second dose of the vaccine. Therefore, the vaccination rate of the French population is 6.8%. The Minister of Health also noted that 286,000 people were vaccinated in the last 24 hours in France, a “record”.
Concerning the decision by Denmark, Norway, and Iceland to pause their vaccination campaign with the product from the Swedish-British laboratory, due to concerns related to blood clots, “there is no reason to suspend vaccination with AstraZeneca,” assures Olivier Véran, who had referred the matter to the National Agency for Medicines Safety.
