France’s most famous twins died of coronavirus within days of each other in hospital.
Grichka and Igor Bogdanoff were hosting a TV science and science-fiction show in the 1980s on a spaceship set.
Grichka died on 28 December 2021, and his brother on 3 January 2022.
Aged 72, the twins did not receive their vaccination against Covid-19.
Their friends said they were aware of their healthy lifestyle would protect them and they went to hospital in mid-December.
Although their families did not specify the cause of their deaths, their lawyer confirmed they had both contracted the virus.
Family friend Pierre-Jean Chalençon said they had left it too late to seek hospital treatment. They thought it was similar to flu. “People have said they were anti-vaxxers but they absolutely weren’t,” he told BFMTV. “Several friends told them to get themselves vaccinated but they felt because of their lifestyle and their [lack of] comorbidity, they weren’t at risk of Covid.”
Omicron has become the main coronavirus strain in France, where the number of new infections has topped 200,000.
The Public Health agency said in its latest weekly survey published Thursday that “62.4 percent of tests showed a profile compatible with the Omicron variant” at the start of the week compared to 15 percent the previous week.
The Omicron variant’s advance was expected because it is highly contagious and has become dominant in other European countries including Britain and Portugal.
The strain contributed to the current flare-up in cases, which surpassed 200,000 in the 24-hour period for the second day.
At the beginning of December there were fewer than 50,000 daily cases. In early November the daily data broke the 10,000 threshold for the first time since mid-September.
