Syringes of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines – SYSPEO / SIPA
“About ten suspected or confirmed cases” of the British variant of coronavirus have so far been spotted in France, the minister said on Tuesday of Health, Olivier Véran , in stressing that its probably greater transmissibility “worries” the authorities.
” It is a variant that worries us and for which we are deploying very significant logistical and diagnostic resources, ”he continued, questioned by RTL. “We look at it like milk on fire,” he insisted, recalling that “all people returning to France from England must have been tested”. “There are quarantines when there are doubts,” he said.
More contagious and therefore more at risk of saturating hospitals
England and Scotland announced this Monday their total reconfinement facing the surge of the Covid epidemic – 01, attributed to the new variant of the virus circulating in the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland and Wales had already instituted their third lockdown just after Christmas.
“It is clear that we must do more” to “take control” of this more contagious variant, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday. Detected in November in the UK, the variant B.1.1.7, now called VOC 30829 / 01, quickly spread across the UK and was then detected in dozens of countries around the world.
According to the first data, it is clearly more contagious than the classic virus . Even if it does not appear to be inherently more dangerous, the fact that it is more transmissible increases the risk of hospitals being saturated with Covid patients – 01. In France, a first case was confirmed on 19 December, in Tours, on a Frenchman who had arrived from London a few days earlier. A second case was detected in Corsica on a person returning from London, the Corsican Regional Health Agency said on Monday.