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Coronavirus. Rapid expansion worries scientists who call for more vigilance

Three dead in Italy, eight in Iran, five in South Korea… Cases of Covid-19 coronavirus are multiplying outside of China, some of which have no established “epidemiological link”. What worry experts and health authorities.

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Passengers boarding a flight from Israel to Italy on February 21, 2020. | ABIR SULTAN / EPA / MAXPPP


  • Passengers boarding a flight from Israel to Italy on February 21, 2020. | ABIR SULTAN / EPA / MAXPPP

The proliferation of new cases of coronavirus outside China confirms WHO’s alarm cry over the risk of the epidemic spreading, experts say on Sunday (February 23rd), calling for increased vigilance.

The Covid-19 epidemic has experienced a watershed in the past 48 hours. WHO and its Member States must now consider moving from a containment strategy to a mitigation strategy, i.e. reducing the negative impacts of continued transmission of the virus, said Professor Devi Sridhar, head of the Health Governance program at the Faculty of Medicine in Edinburgh (Great Britain).

Friday, the boss of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had already sounded the alarm : As we speak, we are still in a phase where it is possible to contain the epidemic. But the shooting window narrows.

Multiplication of new outbreaks

Partly responsible for the multiplication of cases outside the cradle of the epidemic in China no clear epidemiological link, such as travel history or contact with a confirmed case.

Foci have appeared or developed rapidly in recent days in South Korea, in Iran – particularly deadly with 8 deaths for 43 cases listed on Sunday – or in Italy, where almost 150 cases of coronavirus have been recorded in a few days and 11 cities in quarantine. In this country, the most affected in Europe, three people died.

This is called switching to community transmission, explains Professor Arnaud Fontanet, head of the unit epidemiology of emerging diseases at the Pasteur Institute (France). It makes control much more difficult, and it suggests a risk of introduction from places other than China.

” Anywhere in the world “

This is how cases reported in Lebanon and Canada are believed to have originated in Iran. As for the indigenous infectious focus in Italy, scientists are struggling to identify the process of contamination of the patient 1 the origin of the spread.

What’s happening in Italy and South Korea could happen anywhere in the world, warns Professor Sridhar.

Doctor Nathalie MacDermott of King’s College London also discusses developments very concerning, including the difficulty of identifying an individual at the origin of the last epidemic outbreaks.

This suggests a transmission by an asymptomatic individual, or with few symptoms, estimates the specialist, who judges imperative that other countries take these situations into account and strengthen their surveillance of people from affected regions whether or not they have symptoms and strive to contain the outbreaks of indigenous infection.

A new phase

I think it’s a new phase in the extension of Covid-19, explains Eric D’Ortenzio, epidemiologist at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).

This specialist also points to the appearance in the new countries affected by chains of transmission from undetected cases, even if it nuances, pending precise data on the subject, the role of drivers epidemic of asymptomatic cases.

But for him too the consequences to be drawn are clear: There must be increasing vigilance, the authorities must strengthen surveillance, whether on indigenous cases or possible imports from epidemic outbreaks.

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