Slow Travelin': Coronavirus Update

17 January 2022

Coronavirus Update

We're in our fifth wave of coronavirus here in France, and there's no flattening of cases in sight. Omicron is the dominant variant.

Some data:

- average daily new cases are well over 300k, far outstripping previous records

- average daily deaths are approaching 250

- our local hospital (serving a population of 90k) has 50 covid patients, including 6 in ICU (none in ICU was vaccinated). 5 have died in the past week. Visits are prohibited except in certain cases.

- for this fifth wave as a whole, our Sète hospital has admitted 194 patients, including 32 in ICU, and 18 deaths (9.3%)

What France has done...

1st wave: March 2020

You can barely see the case numbers from the first wave on the graph, as the scale has changed so much (we had almost no tests available; people were basically diagnosed after death). Fortunately, the death record is still held by the first wave. It was brought down by a very strict confinement, lifted in increments.

2nd wave: November 2020

Fall school holidays, immediately followed by a second confinement.

3rd wave: April 2021

Vaccines started to become available. France entered a third confinement, but mainly pushed for vaccinations. There were not many available, so these were phased in based on age and risk factors.

4th wave: August 2021

Brought to a peak by holidays, added to by returns to school. France introduced the Health Pass (Pass Sanitaire), where one needed either a vaccination or a recent negative covid test in order to go anywhere fun (restaurant, movies, concerts, etc).

5th wave: now

France recently passed the Vaccination Pass, meaning that you must prove fully vaccinated status to do anything fun (restaurant, movies, concerts, etc). You also need it for domestic flights and long-distance trains. This means that (1) a negative covid test will no longer count and (2) you have to have a booster shot within 7 months of your second vaccine. The focus has shifted from avoiding covid to not having to be hospitalized due to covid. To note: the vaccination pass was approved by parliament, but has been sent on to the constitutional court for review.

What we have done (recently):

- we got our booster in early December, near the beginning of the fifth wave

- I'd been having an English conversation workshop once a week; everyone vaccinated, everyone properly masked. But seeing the skyrocketing cases, we decided to cancel it until April, when we will reevaluate the situation.

- we haven't done anything social since the first part of December; we go out for groceries and health needs, always masked

- even with all these precautions, we came down with something contagious (mild), so went for our covid tests - negative, but really got us thinking

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Previous posts to see:

Fifth wave

https://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2021/11/fifth-wave-of-coronavirus-in-france.html

https://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2021/07/last-week.html

Fourth wave

https://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2021/06/accelerated-deconfinement.html

https://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2021/05/deconfinement-iii.html

https://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2021/04/april-fool-no.html

Third wave