This is the region to watch. The ARS of Nouvelle-Aquitaine has identified around fifty cases, proven or estimated, of the Delta variant (or Indian variant) in the Landes department.

The first cases were identified in a family in the agglomeration of Dax, which has no connection with India or the United Kingdom, where the Delta variant is currently circulating.

Multiple sources of contamination

First spotted in India last April, this variant is said to be 40% more contagious than the Alpha strain, also known as the British variant. The ARS has identified 31 proven cases and estimates that there is at least one “About twenty others, because the positive cases for Covid-19 did not all result in sequencing”.

These cases are “grouped together in about fifteen sources of contamination”, especially family, explains the ARS, and spread over six communities of municipalities in the New Aquitaine region.

Disturbing traffic

The government has expressed concern about the increase in the prevalence of Covid-19 in part of the country, in particular in Occitanie and New Aquitaine. According to the ARS, the “epidemiological situation is unfavorable” in the Landes.

The incidence rate is 95.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, a figure “Higher than the national rate” and increasing “by 35% in less than three weeks”.

Watch out for looseness

However, vaccination in this area is on track. 43.6% of Landais received a first dose of vaccine.

The prefecture and the ARS nevertheless call on the population to “maintain barrier gestures” and explain that “the limitation of groupings to 10 people on the public highway is still in force”.