France, Social Portrait 2021 edition
This work provides a perspective on more than a year of a health crisis with unprecedented economic and social impacts: How has the population's mortality and health changed throughout the waves of Covid-19? To what extent have the preventive measures been adopted? How has the healthcare system been affected? Which regions were most affected by the drop in births seen nine months after the first lockdown? What impact has the crisis had on household income and the job market? What effect did the crisis have on young people?
The Covid-19 pandemic: 4 waves, 116,000 deaths and severe consequences for the healthcare system
Vianney Costemalle (Drees), Mathilde Gaini (Drees), Jean-Baptiste Hazo (Drees), Diane Naouri (Drees)
In France, there have been four waves of the Covid-19 pandemic: spring and autumn 2020, early 2021 and summer 2021. While the peak was smaller with each new wave, the duration of the first three waves increased each time, each resulting in a higher number of cases of serious illness or death. However, the fourth wave, which was caused by a more transmissible variant that emerged after mass vaccine roll-out, was smaller in both size and duration. By September 2021, 460,000 people had been hospitalised and 116,000 people had died of Covid-19 in hospital or in care or nursing homes (including assisted living facilities).
While not those with the highest infection rates, older people are the most vulnerable: before the vaccine, one in every five people aged 70 or above (excluding those in nursing homes) developed a severe form of the disease once infected. Chronic illness also increases the risk of serious illness.
In addition to lockdowns, other sanitary measures were also put in place to curb the spread of the disease. The use of face masks was widespread in November 2020 during the second lockdown, with fewer than 1 in 10 people saying they did not wear a mask when leaving the house. In addition, testing was introduced to identify carriers of the virus and people who needed to self-isolate; in November 2020, around half of those infected were detected using virological tests. By the end of August 2021, almost 60% of the population had already taken at least one test since the start of the pandemic. Finally, the number of people vaccinated, with vaccine roll-out at the end of December 2020, grew quickly, with priority given to the most vulnerable populations. By the start of September 2021, nearly 50 million people had already received at least one dose of a vaccine.
The pandemic also had indirect consequences for the health of the population, largely due to the impact of the crisis on the healthcare system. The number of hospital stays unrelated to Covid-19 fell by 13% in 2020, with non-urgent treatment being cancelled and people being less likely to receive treatment for certain conditions, such as cancer, but also a drop in accidents and other infectious diseases. GP care activity also fell, primarily during the first wave. Mental health worsened particularly among young adults.