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This Sunday, January 19, China raised 17 new cases of the mysterious virus which appeared in Wuhan and which is from the same family as SARS. Three affected patients are in serious condition, which feeds concerns a few days from the great Chinese New Year crossovers.
Of the 17 new cases of coronavirus detected in the city of Wuhan, which is likely to be the first focus of the disease, three were presented as " serious ", reports AFP. Two of these patients are in too critical a condition to be moved. These infected people are between 30 and 79 years old. City officials say the virus has now infected 62 people in Wuhan, including eight who are still in serious condition and 19 who have been treated and released from hospital. The rest are still treated in isolation.
Fear of a new crisis
Two people died after contracting the virus, including a 69-year-old man who died on Wednesday January 15. Falling ill on December 31, he saw his health worsen five days later. Three cases have been confirmed abroad, including two in Thailand and one in Japan. The epidemic raises fears of a new crisis like the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) , highly contagious, which had killed 650 people in mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.
Scientists at a research college at Imperial College in London, which advises institutions like the World Health Organization (WHO), however, estimated in an article published Friday that the virus had probably infected many more people. than what the Chinese authorities claim. They estimated, based on all the information available as of January 12, that the figure of 1,723 infected people was much more likely.
No human-to-human contamination yet
Wuhan authorities said on Sunday January 19 that some of the infected patients had had no contact with a city market specializing in the wholesale of seafood and fish which is the center of suspicion. . No human-to-human contamination has yet been confirmed, but the Wuhan health department said the risk " could not be excluded ". The strain in question is a new type of coronavirus, AFP reports, a family with a large number of viruses. They can cause mild illnesses in humans (like a cold) but also other more serious ones like Sras.
For Patrick Berche, professor emeritus of microbiology at the University of Paris, but also director of the Institut Pasteur de Lille, “ it is indeed a new virus, a coronavirus. It is a family of viruses which is quite widespread in the human species and which usually gives mild respiratory infections, such as colds of the brain for example. So this is a new virus that must have existed for hundreds of thousands of years. They have probably been around for a very long time, and these viruses first reached humans through unusual epidemiological contact. "
" These are viruses that are seen mainly in mammals and birds, but it is likely that they are animals that eat fish. It can be cats, it can be rodents or animals like that. But for the moment, we have no indication of the origin of this virus, ”said Patrick Berche.
► Chinese virus: does Beijing downplay the contamination figures?
In the United States, passengers arriving from China at the airports of San Francisco, Los Angles and New York must complete a questionnaire, go through a temperature measurement, writes our correspondent in San Francisco , Éric de Salve . In case of suspicious symptoms (fever or strong cough) samples are taken to detect a possible case of this Chinese respiratory virus of which scientists know very little.
These tests were decided in the three American cities that have the largest Chinese communities. Each week, three direct flights arrive in San Francisco from Wuhan. No case has yet been detected, but the situation is considered serious by the American health authorities because, in 2003, the deadly SARS virus had had similar beginnings before its spread around the world.