Thursday, April 06, 2023
French SARS-Cov-2 Hospital Stats at the end of March
There were some changes to the rules effective the beginning of February:
- Self-isolation for 5 days (or more) when positive test results is no longer expected.
- Contacts with positive cases are no longer expected to be tested after two days.
From March, people under 65 and not subject to the risk factors (obesity, hypertension, diabetes, etc.) need a prescription from their doctor to get a free test. And positive results do not automatically give them medical leave to stay home from school or work. Contact tracing has ceased, as far as I know.
In a nutshell, in my opinion, we're close to operating as we were at the start of the pandemic en 2020 when testing was limited by material capacity, asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases are treated as "not contagious," children were considered rarely troubled by the disease.
So, how is it going? The number of positive test results is lower, as is to be expected when access to tests is lower; but is gradually rising in most age cohorts. The number of new hospitalizations is well below those this season in the past two years, but is not tending toward zero as one should expect of a seasonal, annual virus (like influenza) as it is now asserted to be by public health policy wonks. How over is it? That depends on one's age.
Positive Test Result Rates
The first chart is in a linear (normal) scale. The high number during last year's waves boost the scale making it hard to see what's happening recently. The second chart show the same data with a logarithmic scale on the y-axis. As expected, daily positives are down, due in part to reduced testing. However, they have not approached zero. Rates are substantially lower for young children and somewhat lower for teens than for older people. Apparent rate of infection increases with age.
Hospital Patients with Covid-19
In this chart, we see the number of Covid-19 patients in the hospital at the end of each week for the two years ending 31 March 2023. I chose these age groups to distinguish people who have work and school obligations (0-69 years) and those who don't (70 and over).
One sees that for the younger first group, after Omicron hit in late December 2021, "surge peaks" have been lower and lower (but baseline troughs have not) and the current situation is at about the same level as what they experienced in 2021 when masks were expected, many indoor venues were closed (restaurants, bars, discos, and more) and access to others was subject to limits and "pass sanitaire" (museums, e.g.). In the current context, without the mid-2021 safeguards, these young people appear to be at little more risk than they were then.
On the other hand, the elderly continue to occupy the hospitals, at levels double or more what they experienced during the mid-2021 restrictions. Roughly, the 25% of the population 70 years and older are 2/3 of the hospital Covid-19 patients since early 2022; that is a six times higher rate of serious illness in a group of people who shouldn't be exposed.
Looking at patient counts gives an idea of who is being treated, but the length of hospital stay may distort this picture: if older patients need three weeks of care and younger patients only three days, then equal rates of admissions will register seven times more older patients at any point in time. The next charts show admissions per million people in the bracket rather than occupants, over the past two years, for five twenty-year age brackets. The first is in a linear scale; because the high numbers in the oldest bracket dwarf the numbers in the younger brackets, the second shows the same data with a logarithmic scale. One sees that the rates for the 60-79 group are nearly ten times higher than for the under-60s.
Better news is that intensive care needs for Covid-19 patients are much lower than during many periods in the past. Deaths, too, are much lower.
