Paris (AFP)

A website has been set up to help French people worried about having been infected with the coronavirus to assess their symptoms and to be advised on what to do.

The maladiecoronavirus.fr site, referenced by the Ministry of Health, allows all those who think they are infected to take an anonymous and free "test": 24 questions about their symptoms (fever, cough, respiratory discomfort, body aches ...) but also on his medical history, his age.

Thanks to an algorithm developed and updated with the latest available scientific knowledge, in collaboration with medical specialists and the Pasteur Institute, the site then advises you either to simply stay confined to your home, to consult your doctor or even immediately call 15.

"This is not a diagnosis, it is an assessment of the state of health to know where we should be directed", explained to AFP Dr. Fabrice Denis, member of the brand new Digital Alliance against Covid-19.

The goal is to reassure, but also to "reduce unnecessary calls to the SAMU, which is saturated," said the cancer specialist, who launched a few years ago an application for personalized monitoring of lung cancer patients.

After the first discreet launch on Wednesday (to first allow a "flash experiment"), the site recorded more than 600,000 connections in three days, indicated the initiators of the initiative.

Saturday at 2 p.m., the figure had increased to 1.4 million then to 2 million at 6 p.m., they assured AFP. And of these two million visitors, half completed the questionnaire to the end, of which 12% were directed towards the Samu, "a figure which confirms the usefulness of the site in the responsible orientation of patients and the need to continue to roll out to the general public. "

The Digital Alliance against the Covid-19, initiated by private actors, now has a dozen members including the startup Kelindi who coordinates the project, Docaposte (digital subsidiary of La Poste Group), AG2R La Mondiale or Allianz France.

Non-nominative data and "stored in strict compliance with security and confidentiality" by Docaposte will be made available to the Institut Pasteur. To assess the evolution of the epidemic, while most patients do not benefit from laboratory tests to confirm or not their contamination.

"We will be able to follow, department by department, the number of patients who have declared a cough with fever and shortness of breath and we will be able to see over time that this number decreases for example," explained Dr Denis.

"These indications will be correlated with those of the hospital services which see the patients pass by and we will see if we can anticipate for example a decrease in the patients requiring resuscitation", he added.

According to the latest assessment announced Friday evening by the health authorities, France has more than 12,000 confirmed cases and 450 deaths.

© 2020 AFP