Washington (AFP)
Forty staff from Zhongnan University Hospital in Wuhan were infected with the new Chinese coronavirus in January, according to a study released Friday that eloquently confirms the vulnerability of healthcare workers to the virus.
A patient admitted to the surgery department for abdominal pain alone infected ten healthcare workers, according to this study conducted by researchers and doctors from Wuhan and published Friday in the American medical journal Jama.
Seventeen people who were hospitalized for other reasons were also infected with the coronavirus during their stay in the facility. In total, out of 138 consecutive cases in this hospital between January 1 and 28, 41% were infected inside.
The study is published a few hours after the death of an ophthalmologist from Wuhan punished for sounding the alarm at the end of December on the emerging epidemic, Doctor Li Wenliang, 34, who had himself been infected by a of his patients. The news of his death sparked anger on the Chinese social network Weibo.
In Zhongnan Hospital, staff from the general care units accounted for most of the cases (31 out of 40), followed by those from the emergency room and the intensive care unit.
One patient infected three other patients who were in the same unit, where they were being treated for abdominal pain.
The example of the patient who infected 10 people alone shows the dangers of the hospital in the first phase of the epidemic, when on average, it is currently estimated that one infected person contaminates 2.2 others.
"If this is true, it confirms that some patients are probably more contagious than others, which creates new difficulties for the management of their cases", commented the doctor Michael Head, of the university of Southampton, via the Science Media Center.
A senior Chinese provincial official admitted on Thursday that medical personnel lacked masks and coveralls to protect themselves.
© 2020 AFP