Ebola experience put to use in Africa facing the risk of coronavirus

Text by: Aurore Lartigue Follow

No case of 2019-nCoV has yet been detected in Africa, but the continent is preparing to face this epidemic from China. The guests of the special edition of RFI explain how.

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" We are ready ", estimated this Friday morning on the antenna of RFI, Jean-Marie Kayembé, dean and professor of pulmonology at the Faculty of Medicine of Kinshasa. If the continent has not yet detected contamination, the countries are ready. The Pasteur Institute in Dakar, designated by the African Union as one of the two reference centers in Africa for the detection of the new coronavirus, also gathered experts from fifteen African countries at the weekend to prepare them for cope with the disease.

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Expertise and tools

All have learned of another respiratory infection, which has so far caused more than 11,000 deaths out of the 29,000 cases recorded: the Ebola virus . " In the Congo, we are in the tenth epidemic of the Ebola virus," said Professor Kayembé. Which gives us a head start, an experience in the response to this disease. We fight together, we capitalize all the revenues in the care. "

And even if the Ebola epidemic is still not contained, the experience of managing such a disease can provide tools to fight against the coronavirus. " The methods of controlling the epidemic are similar," confirms Professor Arnaud Fontanet, head of the epidemiology structure for emerging diseases at the Pasteur Institute interviewed on RFI. Ebola is a viral hemorrhagic fever with patients who, in the terminal stages of the disease, are contagious through all bodily fluids. The control strategy is based on the isolation of the patients, on the follow-up of the contacts over a period which makes it possible to know if they have been infected or not. And it is also based on travel restrictions in the affected areas. So, we are in fact on the same control and control schemes as what we see and that we would think of implementing for this new coronavirus if it were to arrive on the African continent. On the other hand, reminds Prof. Fontanet, if we now have an Ebola vaccine, this is not the case for 2019-nCoV.

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Of course, we learn from one epidemic to another, also pointed out Frédéric Vagneron, associate researcher at the Center for Medical Humanities at the University of Zurich, on the antenna of RFI: at the local level first, but also political and medical. “ More generally, comments the historian, there is a sharing of information which is conveyed by international organizations. This is the case of the WHO [World Health Organization] in particular, which has developed the issue of alert a lot; alerting in the event of an epidemic has become a bit of a challenge. It was the AIDS pandemic in the 1990s that marked a major break. Devices and infrastructures are developed, with the WHO in particular, to mark the possible emergence and re-emergence of potentially catastrophic health events. "

" We don't know how this new coronavirus can behave when it arrives on the African continent"

We know that Africa maintains very strong ties with China. So to know the possible points of emergence of the virus on the African continent, we looked at the existing aircraft flows between the two continents, explains the epidemiologist doctor Arnaud Fontanet. And there are quite a few… " A simulation was published two days ago which indicates the countries which are most exposed to try to anticipate " , he explains. Addis Ababa, for example, is one of those platforms that constitute potential entry points for the virus. " Now, warns the researcher, I think the important thing is that all countries are preparing because the paths taken by passengers can sometimes surprise us. "

He also calls for great vigilance. " We do not know how this new coronavirus can behave when it arrives on the African continent," he notes. For example, there are no definite seasons for the flu because we are in tropical regions. So it circulates a little all year long. We also do not know the effect that temperature can have on this coronavirus. A priori, the coronavirus prefers cold temperatures. But difficult, according to the researcher, to predict how the virus would behave in terms of transmission if it arrived on African soil.

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• China

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