Will the “cousin” virus of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) which has been raging in China since mid-December end up arriving in France? Provoking cough and fever, baptized by the researchers, "2019-nCOV", its transmission from human to human has just been proven. This is likely to further raise the concern of health authorities. Because "nCOV" gallops. In China, where he has already killed three people and reached the north and the south of the country, but also in the rest of Asia.
It is during these last 78 hours that everything has changed, with three new countries affected (Thailand, Japan and South Korea) and more than 220 patients suffering from pneumonia, identified in China by the Chinese authorities, against ... 45 last week.
"Vigilance has just been triggered in France," says one at Public Health France. Since Friday, all the doctors of the Hexagon are thus invited to direct “for clinical analysis”, towards the Samu or “a referent infectiologist”, any person “presenting an acute respiratory infection, whatever its gravity, having traveled or stayed in the city of Wuhan in China in the 14 days preceding the date of onset of clinical signs or having had close contact with a person who fell ill in that city. "
"It is believed that its source is of animal origin"
It is from a fish market of this agglomeration of 11 million inhabitants of the center of China, connected directly by plane, to the United States, to Europe that this virus left, which the researchers try to identify the profile. "It is 80% identical to Sras, explains Arnaud Fontanet virologist at the Pasteur / Cnam institute, and as for Sras, we think that its source is of animal origin, but which precisely, we do not yet know" specifies -t it.
Its incubation time is also an enigma. "For now, we base ourselves on that of SARS, namely that the first symptoms appear between the 5th and the 14th day after infection, but it will take us another two weeks to see clearly" specifies the scientist , struck all the same by the analogy with the SARS pandemic, 18 years ago. "Certainly, the deceased were all old and already sick, that means the virus is not very virulent, but if it mutates, it can become annoying," he observes.
Should passengers who return from Wuhan be filtered, as the American authorities have just done? For the past four days, whether at Los Angeles, San Francisco or JFK (John Fitzgerald Kennedy) New York airport, around a hundred agents have systematically taken the temperature of travelers coming directly from Wuhan.
Precautionary instructions
Effective? “This will catch a few cases in the process. But it's anything but foolproof, especially if the incubation period turns out to be long enough, ”observes Arnaud Fontanet. For the time being, therefore, from Roissy, from which six flights to Wuhan depart each week, no welcome committee. "The WHO does not recommend at this stage travel restrictions or the establishment of screening procedures," said one to the Directorate General of Health (DGS).
As of this Monday, however, precautionary instructions have been put in place for travelers. By way of posters or by messages broadcast on board, those leaving for Wuhan are invited to "avoid going to markets where live or dead animals have come, to eat them when they are little or badly cooked , and in case of symptoms, consult a doctor quickly locally.
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Should this device be further strengthened? This Saturday is Chinese New Year. And in China, which says New Year, says great transhumance, hundreds of millions of people will invade the country's stations and airports to see the family. At the risk of spreading the virus even more? Small consolation: the Pasteur Institute now has a reliable diagnostic tool capable of identifying nCOV, among the large family of coronaviruses.