INTERVIEW
France, which now has more than 3,661 cases of contamination with the new Covid-10 coronavirus and 79 dead, has taken radical measures, including the closure of schools and the banning of gatherings of more than 100 people. But while the World Health Organization (WHO) believes that Europe is now the new center of the pandemic, Marie-Paule Kiény, Director of Research at Inserm and former Deputy Director General of WHO, judges on Europe 1 that these precautions do not go far enough. "It is very good, but it is not enough. We still say that the situation we have in Italy cannot happen in France and I think we are wrong," she warns. "The measures to close schools and support the economy, well done. But we must now go further, and quickly!"
"If we wait, it will be long and expensive"
According to the specialist, containment measures should be accelerated, and why not imitate our Belgian neighbors who are already closing restaurants and cafes. "I think the faster we will do it, the less we will need to do it for a long time. Look at the situation in China: if you take Wuhan and Hubei province, where they waited - less than us, but still - long enough to take drastic measures, we had to maintain them for a very long time. "
However, according to Marie-Paule Kiény, the other provinces of China which quickly implemented significant measures did not experience the same number of cases and deaths. "This means that the faster you do it, the less it is painful. If you wait, it will be long and costly from the point of view of health and the number of deaths."
Risk of congestion in the medical system
According to her, in fact, "we only see the tip of the iceberg" of the French epidemic since we are in an exponential phase and the cases of reported infections are lower than the real cases. "If you do a study of the number of cases, even of salon epidemiologist: the cases that we detect now - which are much lower than what are the real cases because we no longer test people -, these are people who were potentially infected two weeks ago. However, we have an epidemic in France where the number of cases doubles every two or three days, so what we count today is lower than the number of people already infected. [...] If we do nothing, we will continue on this slope and we will very quickly succeed in completely clogging the medical system ".
>> LIVE - Coronavirus: follow the situation on Saturday
According to her, the current situation echoes "what happened in January in China and what happened in Italy ten days ago" and we must prepare for such a scenario . "You must be afraid, but you must not panic. It is useless to rush into the stores, we will not run out of flour. But we must follow the rules of hygiene, be reasonable, protect ourselves and protect others. "