Sorry considering the tons of info we get, I read the summary and I focused on the graphs and tables ... Mea Culpa ...
While the scientific council declared Tuesday, March 24 that containment in France, to be effective, should last six weeks from its establishment, according to experts from Imperial College London, containment of populations must last by the time a vaccine hits the market. Either at least 18 months, whether intermittently or continuously and drastically.
This is an observation that will displease and worry. In an online report published on March 16, British scientists from Imperial College London said that the measures of containment and social distancing should probably last at least 18 months to definitively end Covid-19. Intermittent or not.
“The last time the world responded to a global epidemic of emerging diseases of the magnitude of the current Covid-19 pandemic without access to vaccines was the H1N1 flu pandemic of 1918-19”, better known as the Spanish Flu, experts write. In some cities, schools, bars and churches had been closed. Measures that “succeeded in reducing the number of cases” and generated “a general drop in mortality”. "However, the transmission rebounded once the controls were lifted," experts said.
"The more effective the containment strategy, the more important the epidemic will be in the absence of vaccination, due to a reduced accumulation of collective immunity," they warn. To avoid this rebound once the containment measures are lifted, they therefore propose to maintain the latter “until large stocks of vaccines are available to immunize the population - which could be the case for 18 months or more.”
It is still too early to welcome the figures released by China and South Korea
As an alternative to this radical solution, researchers also advance the idea of “intermittent” social distancing. Thus, the rules of containment could change regularly depending on the evolution of the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19. When the number of cases decreases enough, the measures can be “temporarily relaxed” before being reintroduced when the contaminations start to rise again. In this case, the experts still predict a confinement in force 2/3 of the time.
What about the encouraging figures released by China and South Korea? It is still far too early to be congratulated, say the researchers. “If experience in China, and now in South Korea, shows that containment is possible in the short term, it remains to be seen whether it is possible in the long term, and whether the social and economic costs of the interventions adopted up to 'now can be reduced,' they explain.
Currently, China, whose first known symptoms date back to December 2019, has not reported any new cases, but to get there, the country has simultaneously used a whole series of measures far more stringent than those applied in France. In addition to total containment and systematic detection of cases, population control made it possible to warn anyone who would have been in contact with a patient without knowing it. Each of these people was placed in total quarantine. People arriving in China today can go to jail if they try to escape.
"The effectiveness of any intervention carried out in isolation is likely to be limited, making it necessary to combine several [public health measures] to have a substantial impact on transmission", insist the researchers.
Too much uncertainty in Europe
"For a country that has controlled everything like China, a rebound is unlikely," said Didier Lepelletier, medical officer of health and co-chair of the national working group on coronavirus at the High Council for Public Health, L'Express. However, "WHO still needs to validate all the data to know if it is a significant drop," he said.
"As the number of cases decreases, it becomes easier to adopt intensive testing, contact tracing and quarantine measures similar to the strategies used today in South Korea," the report continues. According to the researchers, certain technological solutions, such as applications that follow an individual's interactions with others, for example, “could allow such a policy to be more effective and more scalable if protection problems associated privacy can be overcome. ”
Applications of this kind are currently being developed in Europe but at the moment, none has yet been officially implemented. Today, too many uncertainties remain. Whether in terms of the mode of transmission of the virus, the effectiveness of the measures introduced by the policies or their respect by the local populations. "It is therefore difficult to be definitive as to the probable initial duration of the measures which will be necessary, except that it will be several months", concludes the report.
“Normal weather is not for tomorrow”
In France, Geneviève Chêne, director general of the French public health agency, declared on March 19 that it would be necessary to wait “between four and two weeks” to observe a change in dynamics in the epidemic on the territory. Monday March 23, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe spoke to tighten the conditions for French exits during confinement.
"Going out to walk your children or to play sports, it must be within a radius of one kilometer around your home, at most for an hour, alone and once a day", he declared, specifying that open markets would henceforth be prohibited, except by dispensation from the prefect on the advice of the mayors. “Many of our fellow citizens, many French people would like to be able to find the time before the normal time, but it is not for tomorrow and we feels that this time of confinement is still ours and that it can last a few more weeks, "he also warned.