Orange with Media Services, published on Monday February 03, 2020 at 11:03 am
Some 4,000 workers at a Marseille shipyard began being vaccinated on Monday after the discovery of a pneumococcal infection.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the new Chinese coronavirus, which has been in the news lately, but it is not to be taken lightly either. The Regional Health Agency (RS) was alerted Thursday by the Marseille University Hospital Institute (IHU) of several cases of pneumococcal infection in people working on the renovation of a cruise ship in Marseille. Thirteen working people developed “pneumococcal pneumonia”, diagnosed by the hospital.
A “real epidemic”, deplores in the columns of La Provence Professor Philippe Parola, specialist in infectious diseases at the IHU.
All worked on the Norwegian Cruise Line, a giant of the dry seas in the “form 10”, the largest in the Mediterranean, where its hull is maintained and its interior modernized.
A large vaccination campaign has been launched. This Monday, February 3, fifteen or so vaccination teams have been deployed in the Grand Maritime Port of Marseille (GPMM) to “protect workers potentially exposed on the site”, said the ARS. Some 4,000 workers are affected. They all work and live in the same place, in hotel boats, in the autonomous port, with 2, 4 or 6 cabins, explains RTL, which specifies that “these are ideal conditions for the bacteria to pass from a patient to the other.”
An epidemic coming from Finland?
Pneumococcus or streptococcus pneumoniae is a bacterium that can cause lung and ENT infections (ear infections, sinusitis), but can also cause more severe forms of invasive infections in 10 to 30% of patients. The transmission is direct from person to person through the secretions of a patient, on the occasion of close contact and prolonged by one hour. “We can die,” says Professor Parola.
What is the source of the epidemic? In doing their research, Professor Parola’s team found that there had been “a similar epidemic six months ago on a boat in a port in Finland”. “Some of our patients were there,” says the specialist.
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