It is the first death of the new coronavirus announced outside Asia: an 80-year-old Chinese tourist, hospitalized in France for several weeks, died, announced the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, Saturday. Only three deaths have so far been recorded outside mainland China: the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan. Europe 1 takes stock of the questions raised by this new stage in the epidemic.
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What do we know about the deceased patient?
"I was informed last night" of this death, said Agnès Buzyn. The condition of this patient, hospitalized at Bichat Hospital in Paris, "had rapidly deteriorated and he had been in critical condition for several days". Arrived in France on January 23, this man from the province of Hubei had first consulted the emergency room of the European Georges Pompidou hospital on Saturday January 25 but had not been identified as a suspect case because he did not correspond to the criteria.
He had a fever but no cough or respiratory signs and was not from Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, but from a city 400 km to the north. He then developed breathing problems that prompted a change in his ranking and the test came back positive on January 28.
How many other people are sick in France?
Six people remain hospitalized but their "condition does not inspire concern", according to Agnès Buzyn. The daughter of the deceased patient, a 50-year-old Chinese woman whose infection had been announced on January 29, "should be able to leave soon" from Bichat, the minister announced. We do not know if she arrived in France already ill or if the virus was transmitted to her by her father on French soil.
The latest cases, announced on February 8, are five Britons - four adults and a 9-year-old child - hospitalized in Lyon for two of them and Grenoble for the other three. They were infected by the same man: a compatriot returning from Singapore, whom they had encountered in a chalet in Les Contamines-Montjoie, in Haute-Savoie, where he had stayed for a few days at the end of January. Another person infected in the chalet by the same man was then hospitalized on the Spanish island of Majorca. After his stay in France, the Briton responsible for the other cases returned to the United Kingdom, where he is linked to at least five other cases of coronavirus.
In Haute-Savoie, 61 tests were carried out to ensure that other people had not been contaminated. All were negative.
How many patients have recovered?
Four patients infected with the new coronavirus are cured and have been able to leave the hospitals where they were treated in isolation. First of all, it is a Chinese couple, who were among the first cases announced on January 24, who left Bichat hospital on Wednesday. The 31-year-old man and 30-year-old woman from Wuhan arrived in France on January 18.
On Thursday, a 48-year-old patient was able to go out after 22 days of hospitalization in Bordeaux. This man from China, who returned to France on January 22 from China, had notably passed through Wuhan. He had been hospitalized the next day after presenting to SOS-Doctors with cough and fever. Confirmation of his contamination had been announced on January 24. The medical team announced Friday that the patient had been treated with remdesivir, a "promising" antiviral.
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A doctor hospitalized at Pitié-Salpêtrière, in Paris, also left on Friday, according to Agnès Buzyn. This first proven case of transmission on French soil had been announced on January 30: it was a liberal doctor who was infected by a Chinese patient, then left for Taiwan where he declared the disease. The criteria for discharging cured patients respond to an "extremely safe protocol" which is the subject of an "international consensus": the symptoms (fever, cough ...) must have disappeared and "two negative tests are required" in an interval of 24 hours to ensure that they are no longer contagious, described this week the Director General of Health Jérôme Salomon.