“We thought it was over”: how the Covid is catching up with the French in the middle of summer

A few days ago, having just returned from a week’s vacation in Spain, Delphine, 34, feels bad. “I was like in a flu-like state, I had aches and a very bad headache, she says. At first, I thought I had caught a cold because of the air conditioning on the plane…” A few days later, after hearing about a resurgence of the Covid-19 epidemic, the young woman decided to carry out a screening test. “I have friends who had floated the idea that I might have caught Covid, but I didn’t believe it at all, I told them they were crazy. I didn’t think it could happen again. When my test turned out to be positive, I was really very surprised“, she confides to L’Express.

An epidemic resumption in the heart of summer

After more than three years of the pandemic, barrier gestures and screening tests as part of the fight against Covid-19 have largely been abandoned or even forgotten. But the SARS-Cov-2 virus has recently been remembered by some French people: an epidemic upsurge seems to have been taking shape since the end of July, in particular carried, according to scientists, by a variant of Omicron, nicknamed Eris (EG.5 of his real name). In the emergency room, visits for suspicion of Covid increased by 31% the week from July 31 to August 6 compared to the previous one, according to Public Health France. SOS doctor, for its part, notes that medical procedures for suspected Covid-19 have jumped by 84% in one week.

The whole of the metropolitan territory is concerned, but the upward trend is more marked in the “most touristic” regions. “The increase in cases is localized in the South-West, driven by the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, in particular the departments of Landes and Pyrénées-Atlantiques”, detailed the Directorate General of Health during a press briefing, become rarer in recent months. In the Southwest, the Bayonne celebrations, which took place between July 26 and 30 and which brought together more than 1.3 million people, seem to have been conducive to a burst of the virus.

At the Bayonne festivals, “we went there without precaution”

It is precisely there that Florent, 27, claims to have caught the virus for the third time since 2020. “My girlfriend was first sick, like a bad cold, then I was sick two days later”, says -he. Far from thinking about the Covid at first, the young man finally carried out a screening test after reading in the press that the holidays had generated clusters. “In our minds, we said to ourselves that the Covid was over. We went to the parties without any precautions. We didn’t even think about it for a single moment. We had all let our guard down and now it’s gone,” he added.

For him and his girlfriend, there was no question of going to the doctor, nor of stopping work despite overwhelming fatigue. “We took dolipranes and we teleworked all week,” he says, adding that he was not worried “more than that” about catching the virus. “Finally it’s like having the flu, it has become classic to be contaminated by Covid-19”.

General practitioner between Toulouse and Montauban, doctor Jérôme Marty also confirms an upsurge in visits to his office for suspicion of Covid, as well as the increase in positive tests. “When they are told that their symptoms strongly resemble Covid, they are very surprised, very surprised. For them, it was over”, notes the doctor, also president of the UFMLS union. “This is the whole problem of the abandonment of barrier measures in the general population for months”, he adds a bit annoyed.

Back to the time of lost freedoms

Result for the French tested positive, the painful memories of the epidemic period resurface and certain precepts must again be applied. After a week of vacation spent in Capbreton (Landes), the members of the entourage of Marie, 38, were positive one by one. First the couple of friends with whom she shared a rental on the Landes coast, then her husband and her granddaughter, just one year old, and finally herself. “We were very surprised. To be honest, we weren’t expecting it too much, at least not there, in the middle of the summer,” says this teacher, coughing on the other end of the line. “I’m still positive,” she adds.

Marie and her family very quickly adopted barrier gestures so as not to contaminate other people, especially fragile relatives. “It’s been almost ten days since we’ve been confined because we haven’t all had it at the same time…”, she points out. All their plans therefore had to be reviewed or cancelled. Impossible to honor an invitation to a baptism this weekend, to visit his dad suffering from cancer in the hospital, or to resume face-to-face work for his spouse. “We never imagined going through that again, being deprived of our freedoms again, missing moments…”

It is to avoid this kind of situation that Dr Jérôme Marty calls for a better communication and prevention campaign around Covid-19. “We know that this virus is endemic, that it will be part of our lives for a while. But the politicians have chosen to say that it no longer exists, he is indignant. I believe that we must act as the truth, that we must relaunch a vaccination campaign and communication around barrier gestures.

At the hospital too, the virus was out of mind

However, even in the hospital, the emergence of this new variant does not seem to worry more than necessary. “On orders from the hygiene and virology departments, the two hospitals where I work have decided to remove the wearing of the compulsory mask in their enclosure”, testifies Alizée Soulié, pediatrician at the AP-HP (Public Assistance of Paris Hospitals) . “The measures had relaxed, we had ended up forgetting the Covid too, especially since we no longer saw any cases…”, adds the doctor, recalling the heavy screening process subjected to patients and their relatives for three years. Until April 2023, hospitals were indeed asking for tests for patients treated for scheduled operations, but also for those who had to stay in a double room…

Faced with an upsurge in cases in recent days, Alizée Soulié indicates that questions about the wearing of the compulsory mask are emerging again in discussions with her colleagues. Without, however, being alarmist. Nevertheless, in certain hospitals in the south-west of the country, in particular in Arcachon, the barrier measures are again in force to avoid an overload of hospital activity.

France is not the only country to be affected by a rebound. The United States, the United Kingdom, but also India and Japan are concerned. The number of new cases recorded worldwide jumped 80% over one month, with 1.5 million additional contaminations between July 10 and August 6, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.