A new European country in turn reports the presence on its soil of a person contaminated with coronavirus . This is Belgium, as confirmed by Belgian Minister of Health Maggie De Block. The state of health of this person is stable, specifies the press release of the minister. “She was transferred last night to the Saint Pierre University Hospital in Brussels, one of the two reference centers in our country. This hospital has all the expertise and support necessary to guarantee the best care,” explains the communicated. This patient is one of the nine Belgian nationals repatriated from Wuhan this Sunday evening.
Hello and welcome to this direct, which we dedicate again to the latest information related to the Chinese coronavirus . The main information of this Tuesday morning is the officialization of a patient suffering from the virus and died in Hong Kong. This marks the second death outside of China , where the epidemic was born, after the Philippines. Important clarification: many Hong Kong media, taken up in France by AFP, assure that the patient already suffered from health problems which complicated his assumption of responsibility.
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The origin of the Chinese virus is still mysterious. The cradle of the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is the gigantic fish market in the city of Wuhan, in central China , where other animals pass through every week, in particular snakes or bats, suspected of being the first agents carrying the virus. If the animal origin of the virus no longer seems to make too much doubt, the fear of a mutation allowing human-to-human transmission is also legitimate, given the rapid spread of the epidemic. “The human-to-human transmission of 2019-nCoV is proven,” ruled Public Health France , the French public health reference center, on January 24.
The precise mode of transmission of the coronavirus is also still unknown. However, we know that viruses generally need a “host” to circulate. They are therefore transmitted almost systematically by the exchange of fluids, saliva, postilions, droplets from a sneeze or a cough. Public Health France adds contacts with “surfaces freshly contaminated by these secretions”. Transmission by physical contact or interposed objects is less likely, the infectivity of a virus decreasing very quickly outside a body.
The virus, contracted by several hundred Chinese since December, is one of the coronaviruses. This family of viruses encompasses several pathologies, whether in humans or animals, ranging from a simple cold to other more serious symptoms. In the case of this virus (2019-nCoV), the people affected were affected by significant respiratory disorders, high fever, symptoms similar to those observed during influenza or pneumonia. The Ministry of Solidarity and Health gives a fairly summary list of symptoms, simple signs of respiratory infection: “fever and cough / breathing difficulties”. For people with these symptoms who have stayed in China , you are asked to:
Contact Samu Center 15, reporting symptoms and recent stay in China.
Do not go to your doctor or to the emergency room, to avoid any potential contamination.
France is also one of the first European countries to have developed a test, thanks to the Institut Pasteur. This “quality” test “makes it possible to make a diagnosis in the space of a few hours”, according to Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn. Already available in Paris or Lyon, and “distributed in public hospitals in the course of next week”, it is this test which would have made it possible to detect the first patients in Europe.
There is no specific treatment or vaccine today against the human coronavirus . Only the symptoms of the disease are treated today. In other words, the only drugs prescribed to patients are drugs that fight pain and fever, but not the infection itself. In the event of serious breathing difficulties, more powerful treatments and respiratory aid can be administered, in France , in referral health establishments (ESR), hospitals designated and equipped to respond to exceptional health situations.
Several initiatives are multiplying, in China or in the United States , to develop a vaccine and treatments against the coronavirus , sometimes with massive means and the financial support of big companies like Alibaba or Apple. By analyzing the first French cases, the scientists at the Institut Pasteur managed to analyze its genetic code and promised a vaccine that would be operational in 20 months, that is, for the summer of 2021 if the virus does not mutate by then.
The announcement on Friday January 24 of the first confirmed cases of coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in France , Bordeaux and Paris, marked a new stage in the spread of the virus outside of China , and now on European soil. The mystery remains whole on the real risk of an epidemic in France . This virus is reminiscent of SARS, for severe acute respiratory syndrome, a coronavirus which has the distinction of having already struck China with devastating consequences between November 2002 and May 2003, the period in which more than 700 people had lost life (more on SARS here). Fewer than 10 people had been affected in France according to epidemiological data and no victims were then to be deplored. Even if the contagiousness and the mortality rate of the coronavirus can still evolve, it is estimated that it is for the moment a little less contagious than SARS, but also less deadly. A “moderate” contagiousness, the coronavirus displays a mortality rate of 2 to 3% against 9.6% for SARS, a rate which could go up to 43% in people over 60 years for this disease. The coronavirus would also be a little less contagious than the seasonal flu, which causes around 10,000 deaths each year in France , but on the other hand exceeds it in terms of mortality, the flu having a mortality rate of 0.3% .
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On Thursday January 30, WHO officially declared an international health emergency regarding the coronavirus epidemic. In France , a daily information point is carried out every day by the Ministry of Health . Friday, January 31, the ministry set up a toll free number, 0800 130 000, open from 9h to 19h every day and reserved for “all questions that do not concern health ”. The goal: to relieve 15 to answer questions “that are not medical” and that are not directly related to symptoms. “If people have symptoms and medical issues” and they return from China , always call centers 15, the ministry said.
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