Carry-le-Rouet (France) (AFP)

After 14 days of isolation in a holiday center in Carry-le-Rouet (Bouches-du-Rhône), intended to ensure that they were not infected with the new coronavirus, the first 181 returnees from Wuhan in France are due to exit quarantine on Friday.

To date, authorities have not reported any contamination from the Covid-19 epidemic among these people who were quarantined after leaving the city of Wuhan (central China), the epicenter of the epidemic.

Health Minister Agnès Buzyn announced Thursday evening that she would be on site Friday noon. "They will be very, very keen to leave very, very quickly, so I'm just going to greet them. I'm going there mainly to meet all the teams who took care of them for two weeks," she said. at a press conference in Paris.

Thursday was to be devoted to suitcases, which must be packed in the evening for early departures early Friday, authorities told them. They can organize their departure Friday on their own, for example if relatives come to pick them up, or use the shuttles made available by the authorities to reach the station or airport.

As people approached departure, many people juggled between plane and train schedules, while some still had no clear idea of ​​what they were going to do once outside, noted one of the three AFP journalists in quarantine in the center, where wearing a mask is compulsory in common areas.

These 181 people, the majority of them French, some of them with their spouses, had landed on January 31 at the Istres military airport, and had been transferred by bus to this holiday center on the Blue Coast, about thirty kilometers west of Marseille.

After their departure, 157 other people will remain in quarantine: 44 in Carry-le-Rouet and 113 in Aix-en-Provence, on the premises of the National School for Firefighting Officers (Ensosp).

Some of them arrived on a second flight on February 2, and their quarantine should end on Sunday. The 35 people who arrived on a third flight on February 9 via London will have to wait until February 23.

The adoption by the authorities of a new definition of the cases of infection jumped Thursday the human toll of the epidemic in China to nearly 60,000 confirmed cases and at least 1,355 dead. Outside China, including the autonomous regions of Macao and Hong Kong, nearly 500 cases of contamination and two deaths have been confirmed in around 30 countries and territories.

© 2020 AFP