Lockdown in France enters its second month today. It seems to be bearing modest fruits, with admissions to hospital falling for the second day running and the number of people in intensive care falling for the eighth.
The official death toll continues to rise, however, as does the number of recorded cases, which is, of course, an underestimate.
Nevertheless, it’s not looking good for herd immunity, if a report from Wuhan is to be believed.
A hospital there found that only 2.4% of its employees and 2-3% of discharged patients have developed antibodies, according to the Wall Street Journal, leaving its director, Wang Xinghuan, to conclude that a vaccine is our only hope.
Everybody’s slagging off China these days, which will no doubt send the ranting diplomat in the Paris embassy into a frenzy of what-aboutery.
Trump has of course been lashing out for some time and, inevitably, the British have echoed the American leader. Now Macron has told the Financial Times that it is “naïve” to suggest China had dealt better with the crisis.
Things have “happened that we don’t know about”, he added darkly.
Today the Chinese admitted that reporting of the number of deaths in Wuhan has been delayed and inaccurate and added 1,290 to the death toll there.
But that only takes the total to 4,632 out of a population 1,439,323,776, which is difficult to believe. We know that the People’s Republic’s bureaucratic authoritarian culture led local officials to harass doctors who blew the whistle at the beginning. So there is probably underreporting.
But, when they did act, the Chinese acted decisively and the country seems to have turned the corner now.
In the US 32,916 people have now died, out of a population of 330,584,100; in Italy 22,170 out of 60,480,630; in Spain 19,315 out of 46,751,140; in the UK 13,759 out of 67,813,940; and in France 17,920 out of 65,244,420.
There is a considerable disparity, even if the Chinese figures are hugely underestimated.
More on municipal communism. Raphaël, the Champigny-sur-Marne council employee who phones to check on Mum’s well-being every weekday delivered two bags full of fruit and veg to our door yesterday.
The council is distributing healthy food to people in financial difficulty and to those who should not be going out too much during lockdown.
We are both of an age to be at relatively high risk from the virus, so we presumably fall into the second category.
We can’t claim to be in financial difficulty, as our neighbour Marianne pointed out. I gave her some bananas, apples and potatoes. That shut her up.
France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 17,920. 31,305 people are in hospital, down 474 in 24 hours, and 6,248 are in intensive care, down 209. 32,812 people have been discharged from hospital.
