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This rate corresponds to the old maximum warning threshold. If these figures are partly influenced by the decline in the number of tests, they show a slow decline in the epidemic in France.
It had been nearly three months since this had happened: no department currently has a weekly incidence rate greater than 250, according to the latest data from Public Health France for the week of November 23-29. However, this decrease is associated with a sharp drop in the number of tests performed. Recall that the weekly incidence rate corresponds to the number of new coronavirus cases officially registered in the last 7 days, then reported to 100,000 inhabitants.
The threshold of 250 is symbolic because it was, before the reconfiguration, the threshold of “maximum alert”. Most departments going through it could catch up quickly measures to limit the spread of the epidemic: curfew in metropolitan areas, closing of bars, limitation of gatherings …
We have to go back to the beginning of September to find an equivalent situation. At the time, the circulation of the virus in Guadeloupe and the Bouches-du-Rhône particularly worried the authorities but the situation seemed under control in the rest of the country.
In the following weeks, nearly all metropolitan departments passed this symbolic threshold of 250 cases per 100,000 population, as shown in the GIF below. If ever the animated map doesn’t display correctly on your device, click here.
September and November 2020: health situations that remain very different
But be careful not to compare the current health situation too quickly with that of early September. The common point between the two periods is that no department has an incidence rate greater than 250. However, this indicator suffers from some limitations, as we have explained in this article.
In particular it is very dependent on the number of tests carried out, currently in sharp decline: it has been divided by two in three weeks. Between 23 and 29 November, 1,129,000 RT-PCR tests were validated, 263,000 fewer than the previous week.
“This decrease was partially offset by the increase in antigen tests, the number of which would approach 200,000 in the last week of November,” specifies the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees) from the Ministry of Health in a press release issued Thursday.
All the other indicators are now in a much more worrying state, starting with the national incidence rate: 96.8 currently against 76.9 at the beginning of September.
The current national situation is more similar to that of mid-October
The number of severe cases today is also much higher:
- about 250 hospitalizations per day at the beginning of September compared to about 1,250 today
- about 40 daily admissions to intensive care at the beginning of September compared to 175 today
- about 20 deaths a day in early September compared to nearly 320 today
If we compare the number of serious cases per day – the most reliable indicator of the incidence rate to judge the dynamics of the epidemic – we are currently in a situation comparable to mid-October.
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