Did the second confinement really break the spread of Covid-19?



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At the University Hospital of Toulouse, during the training of caregivers on the procedures for the care of Covid-19 patients. – B. Colin / 20 minutes

  • Hospital services in Occitanie have seen a 30% decline in hospitalizations with Covid-19 in the past week.
  • However, the intensive care units are still overburdened, fifteen days behind the hospitalization curve.
  • According to a statistical study by the University Hospital of Toulouse, the confinement in the urban area of ​​the Pink City allowed to break the curve of the circulation of the virus and the positive rate of the tests. But until when?

Taken together, all indicators show that the decline of the coronavirus outbreak is on track in Toulouse and more broadly in the Occitanie region. “We have seen a decline in hospitalizations in conventional hospitalization in the region of 30% in one week, the incidence rate is approaching the threshold of 150 positive cases per 100,000 population and the reproduction rate has dropped below 1”, Pierre said Friday. Remembereau, director of the regional health agency.

Before pointing out that the level of the epidemic remains high in the region. In fact, 166 Covid patients are still hospitalized at the University Hospital of Toulouse, far from the epidemic peak reached during this second wave with 220 patients at the CHU. But, with a delay, there are still a large number of people in ICU, since 62 are still in ICU, including 42 in ICU.

For healthcare workers, confinement has therefore clearly played its role over the past three weeks, easing the pressure in the past few days. Chloé Diméglio, a biostatist in the virology laboratory of the University Hospital of Toulouse, had already demonstrated the crucial role that wearing a mask or even bar fasteners played in the circulation of the virus in the Toulouse area. She has re-run her mathematical models in the last few weeks and has been able to calculate the constraint that applies to the spread of the virus.

The confinement broke the viral dynamics of SARS-Cov2 in the urban area.
The confinement broke the viral dynamics of SARS-Cov2 in the urban area. – Chloe Dimeglio / University Hospital of Toulouse

With the curfew and previously taken measures such as wearing a mask, we were on a 37% restriction applied to the circulation of the virus. “These various measures had made it possible to smooth out the dynamics, confinement breaks this curve and lowers stress by 9%. The positive rate for the tests is 10 to 12% and, according to forecasts, we will be at 7.6% on 1 December ”, explains Chloé Diméglio.

Only 2% positivity in February

Well over 2% indicated by the government as the threshold for the virus under control. To achieve this goal in the urban area of ​​Toulouse, it would be necessary to remain confined until the beginning of February according to the mathematical model of the biostatistician, the population of the Pink City and its region with a collective immunity rate that still does not exceed 5% .

“The longer we wait to deconfine, the more this test positive rate will drop and the easier it will be to manage, even if we don’t have to be at the 2% level to get the virus under control. We have a drop in the rate today, but intensive care and inpatient services are still in high demand and are just starting to stabilize. The question is knowing when to deconfine and how not to quickly find yourself in a difficult situation, ”says the researcher.

And this is all the difficulty that arises for the health authorities in not deconfining and redefining 15 days later. Some departments, such as Gard or the Hautes-Pyrénées, have test positivity rates above 17%, with more recent spread of the virus than other sectors in the region that had previously adopted restriction measures.



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