The first results of a study in the Paris region, which assessed the presence of several types of coronavirus in France, "are not good", said Remy Salomon, chairman of the medical commission of the Paris Hospitals and Public Aid (AP-HP), speaking for "exponential growth".

"On January XNUMX, we were approximately six percent and last week we climbed to fifteen to twenty percent. It will become dominant in the next two to four weeks. And because it is 40 to 70 percent more contagious, the epidemic will accelerate if we do not do significantly more. "That is what scares us," Remy Salomon told Fransinfo.

He believes that in order to slow down the spread of the virus, it is reasonable to close schools for maybe three weeks or a month, and then reopen them, and said that he is only committed to working remotely.

A second study to assess the presence of new variants of the coronavirus in France should yield preliminary results earlier in the week.

This quick investigation consists of re-analyzing and then sequencing a large sample of positive PCR tests performed last Wednesday to determine if it is a common type of SarsKov2 or one of the variants that have emerged in recent weeks in the UK, South Africa. and Brazil.

The first study, which looked at only British-type viruses, estimated that variants were responsible for 3,3 per cent of Covid-19 cases diagnosed by RT-PCR in France on January 7 and 8, with a heterogeneous presence on national territory that "It can range from 0,2 percent in Burgon-Franche-Comté to 6,9 percent in Ile-de-France."

Based on the preliminary results of this second close study, the Minister of Health, Olivier Veran, pointed out that the circulation of the English variant intensifies by fifty percent every week, but in a less intense way than abroad, where it increases from seventy to one hundred percent. .