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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

OPINION: New wave of Covid cases in France is likely, but not as bad as the UK’s

With Covid case numbers in France showing a slight but sustained rise, John Lichfield looks at whether we can expect a fifth wave and whether it will be as bad as the situation across the Channel.

Published: 21 October 2021 12:40 CEST
Updated: 24 October 2021 05:14 CEST
Mask mandates remain in place in France on public transport.
Mask mandates remain in place in France on public transport. Photo: Martin Bureau/AFP

Is France, like Britain, fated to suffer a new spike of Covid this winter?

On two occasions in the last ten months, France reduced the Covid pandemic to manageable levels, only to be swamped by a new wave of infections which, in effect, crossed the Channel.

The alpha (UK variant) arrived in France in January and the delta (Indian variant) in July, a month or so after the United Kingdom. This is not necessarily to “blame” Britain – just to state the facts.

In the last two months, France has reduced its average number of cases from around 24,000 a day in mid-August to around 4,600 a day.

IN NUMBERS France sees rise in Covid cases as MPs extend health pass

The UK now has an average of 46,000 cases a day – ten times as many as France – and the numbers are rising fast. The British health secretary, Sajid Javid, warned on Tuesday that they could reach 100,000 this winter.

Is this déjà vu all over again? Are the British figures in October a forecast of the French figures in November-December?

Maybe. Maybe not.

On the two previous occasions, the renewed boom in cases was caused by a more aggressive variant of Covid-19. It was inevitable, despite restrictions on travel, that this new form would spread to other European countries and especially Britain’s nearest continental neighbour.

This time, the new wave in Britain cannot be blamed on a mutation of the virus. There is a new form of the Delta variant in limited numbers in the UK – AY4.2 – which may be more contagious and may cause trouble in the weeks ahead. It does not explain the present surge in cases in the UK, which is most concentrated amongst children, teenagers and 20-somethings.

That may be good news for France – but it is also a warning.

Britain is paying the price for a mixture of its successes and its failures. France has avoided some of the failures but risks falling into some of the same traps.

The UK raced ahead of EU countries in its vaccination programme from January to April. The protection is now wearing off ahead of its neighbours but the UK government has been slow to introduce a programme of third or booster jabs.

Britain also cast caution to the winds in July, celebrating “freedom day” and abandoning many of the irksome social protections which (whatever the critics may say) slow the spread of the virus.

I visited London earlier this month for the first time in two years. The contrast with France was striking – very little mask-wearing, even on public transport.

Britain also refused to extend the vaccination programme to teenagers until a few weeks ago. There were even some in Britain who accused France of unnecessarily “vaccinating children” to boost its headline total of first jabs.

Britain’s early success in rolling out the vaccination programme to adults and especially the elderly was impressive and probably saved many lives. But many EU countries, including France, have now overtaken Britain.

From the summer, the UK has rested on its oars – or like the hare in Aesop’s fable taken a nap before completing the race (the race to protect as much of the population as possible).

Britain, after shillying and shallying, refused to introduce even a limited form of the health or vaccine passport. President Emmanuel Macron announced a French health pass on July 12th (making access to fun and long-distance travel dependent on full vaccination, recovery from Covid or a recent negative test).

EXPLAINED When and where you need a health pass in France

Since that date, over 15,000,000 French people have been first-vaccinated. In the UK in the same period the figure is circa 3,500,000.

France has now completed almost 51m first vaccinations (the total was revised downward slightly yesterday). Britain, with a slightly higher population has given 49.5m first jabs. Using international definitions, France has first vaccinated 75.3 percent of its whole population and completely vaccinated 67.3 percent. The figures for the UK are 72.6 percent and 66.6 percent.

Coverage of teenagers, 20 somethings and some ethnic minorities in the UK remains relatively poor. France’s weakness is coverage of the very old or 80-plus – still 13 percent or so unvaxxed.

Since late-August, France’s daily average of Covid cases has sunk rapidly. In the last week or so, it has started to rise but has now flattened out at around 4,600 cases a day.

This may, however, be a false reading. Free tests for the vax-shy (to enable them to keep up their health pass) ended last Friday. The number of tests has fallen sharply which may disguise the number of new cases. We will know in a few days.

There are good reasons to hope that France will not suffer the kind of surge of cases seen in Britain. There are also good reasons to be worried.

Observation of social distancing measures remains reasonably good but anecdotal evidence suggest that it is beginning to weaken. France will start to suffer in the coming months the kind of erosion of vaccine protection already seen in the UK.

The French government has launched a booster, or third shot, programme for care and health workers, the over 65s and the fragile but it is currently suffering the same fate as the early French first-vax programme. It is bobbing along without any sense of urgency. Less than 2,000,000 third jabs have been given so far. The government promises to speed things up.

READ ALSO Who can get a Covid booster shot in France?

The infection pattern of the last year – seen in the below graph by Nicolas Berrod of Le Parisien – is that France follows about a month behind the UK but at a substantially lower level. With the weather growing colder and vaccination protection for the early French vaccinees fading, there will probably be a resurgence of cases in the next month or so.

With luck and a renewed sense of government and public caution, the figures will go nowhere near as high as the 100,000 cases a day predicted for the UK.

Member comments

  3. Very useful summary of the current state of affairs and the possible future state for France. I think a rise in cases is inevitable in the winter months however, if the French and EU authorities take the sensible measure of closing their borders to the UK that will at least delay the inevitable.

  4. The Covid experience has been a lesson about humanity and what can be expected from humanity in a world wide crisis.

    Discouraging is the operative word!

  5. We in Australia are also looking at the UK with interest. With the UK rushing into many of their decisions, they have served as a sounding board for many other nations. As of today we have 86.6% first vaccinations in 16+ year olds and 73.1% fully vaccinated in 16+ year olds. From November 2021 Australia will open its international border for the first time since March 2020, however it will only be for vaccinated citizens and their families at this time.

    It seems the world is caught in a horrible loop, with every winter looking at how to deal with covid. Sadly, the future does not look good at this stage, despite the vaccines, although they have reduced deaths thankfully.

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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

OPINION: Why Germans’ famed efficiency makes the country less efficient

Germans are famous for their love of efficiency - and impatience that comes with it. But this desire for getting things done as quickly as possible can backfire, whether at the supermarket or in national politics, writes Brian Melican.

Published: 24 May 2023 10:38 CEST
OPINION: Why Germans' famed efficiency makes the country less efficient

A story about a new wave of “check-outs for chatting” caught my eye recently. In a country whose no-nonsense, “Move it or lose it, lady!” approach to supermarket till-staffing can reduce the uninitiated to tears, the idea of introducing a slow lane with a cashier who won’t sigh aggressively or bark at you for trying to strike up conversation is somewhere between quietly subversive and positively revolutionary – and got me thinking.

Why is it that German supermarket check-outs are so hectic in the first place?

READ ALSO: German supermarkets fight loneliness with slower check outs for chatting

If you talk to people here about it – other Germans, long-term foreign residents, and keen observers on shorter visits – you’ll hear a few theories.

One is that Germans tend to shop daily on the way home from work, and so place a higher premium on brisk service than countries where a weekly shop is more common; and it is indeed a well-researched fact that German supermarket shopping patterns are higher-frequency than in many comparable countries.

Bavarian supermarket

A sign at a now-famous supermarket in Bavaria advertises a special counter saying “Here you can have a chat”. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Karl-Josef Hildenbrand

Another theory is that, in many parts of the country (such as Bavaria), supermarket opening hours are so short that there is no other way for everyone to get their shopping done than to keep things ticking along at a good old clip.

The most simple (and immediately plausible) explanation, of course, is that supermarkets like to keep both staffing and queuing to a minimum: short-staffing means lower costs, while shorter queues make for fewer abandoned trolleys.

German love of efficiency

Those in the know say that most store chains do indeed set average numbers of articles per minute which their cashiers are required to scan – and that this number is higher at certain discounters notorious for their hard-nosed attitude.

Beyond businesses’ penny-pinching, fast-lane tills are a demonstration of the broader German love of efficiency: after all, customers wouldn’t put up with being given the bum’s rush if there weren’t a cultural premium placed on smooth and speedy operations.

Then again, as many observers not yet blind to the oddness of Germany’s daily ‘Supermarket Sweep’ immediately notice, the race to get purchases over the till at the highest possible rate is wholly counter-productive: once scanned, the items pile up faster than even the best-organised couple can stow away, leaving an embarrassing, sweat-inducing lull – and then, while people in the queue roll their eyes and huff, a race to pay (usually in cash, natch’).

In a way, it’s similar to Germany’s famed autobahns, on which there is theoretically no speed limit and on which some drivers do indeed race ahead – into traffic jams often caused by excessive velocity.

Yes, it is a classic case of more haste, less speed. We think we’re doing something faster, but actually our impatience is proving counterproductive.

German impatience

This is, in my view, the crux of the issue: Germans are a hasty bunch. Indeed, research shows that we have less patience than comparable European populations – especially in retail situations. Yes, impatience is one of our defining national characteristics – and, as I pointed out during last summer’s rail meltdown, it is one of our enduring national tragedies that we are at once impatient and badly organised.

As well as at the tills and on the roads, you can observe German impatience in any queue (which we try to jump) and generally any other situation in which we are expected to wait.

Think back to early 2021, for instance, when the three-month UK-EU vaccine gap caused something approaching a national breakdown here, and the Health Minister was pressured into buying extra doses outside of the European framework.

This infuriated our neighbours and deprived developing countries of much-needed jabs – which, predictably, ended up arriving after the scheduled ones, leaving us with a glut of vaccines which, that very autumn, had to be destroyed.

A health worker prepares a syringe with the Comirnaty Covid-19 vaccine by Biontech-Pfizer. Photo: John MACDOUGALL / AFP

Now, you can see the same phenomenon with heating legislation: frustrated by the slow pace of change, Minister for Energy and the Economy Robert Habeck intended to force property owners to switch their heating systems to low-carbon alternatives within the next few years.

The fact that the supply of said alternatives is nowhere near sufficient – and that there are too few heating engineers to fit them – got lost in the haste…

The positive side of impatience

This example does, however, reveal one strongly positive side of our national impatience: if well- directed, it can create a sense of urgency about tackling thorny issues. Habeck is wrong to force the switch on an arbitrary timescale – but he is right to try and get things moving.

In most advanced economies, buildings are responsible for anything up to 40 percent of carbon emissions and, while major industrials have actually been cutting their CO2 output for decades now, the built environment has hardly seen any real improvements.

Ideally, a sensible compromise will be reached which sets out an ambitious direction of travel – and gets companies to start expanding capacity accordingly, upping output and increasing the number of systems which can be replaced later down the line. Less haste now, more speed later.

The same is true of our defence policy, which – after several directionless decades – is now being remodelled with impressive single-mindedness by a visibly impatient Boris Pistorius.

As for the check-outs for chatting, I’m not sure they’ll catch on. However counterproductive speed at the till may be, I just don’t see a large number of us being happy to sacrifice the illusion of rapidity so that a lonely old biddy can have a chinwag. Not that we are the heartless automatons that makes us sound like: Germany is actually a very chatty country.

It’s just that there’s a time and a place for it: at the weekly farmer’s markets, for instance, or at the bus stop. The latter is the ideal place to get Germans talking, by the way: just start with “About bloody time the bus got here, eh?” So langsam könnte der Bus ja kommen, wie ich finde…

READ ALSO: 7 places where you can actually make small talk with Germans

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