INTERVIEW
It was February 8, in other words a century: in the heart of winter, the Haut-Savoyard village of Contamines-Montjoie learned that a chalet in this winter sports resort sheltered several people positive for the coronavirus discovered in China. Nearly two and a half months later, the mayor and the pharmacist of this commune were the guests of Wendy Bouchard, Saturday, to tell how the station managed a crisis that has become national and global.
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At the beginning of February, therefore, this village of 1,000 inhabitants suddenly hit the headlines: a Briton returning from Singapore contaminated eleven of his compatriots in one of the homes in Contamines-Montjoie. "At that time, we were alerted very quickly by the services of the prefecture and the Regional Health Agency", tells Europe 1 Etienne Jacquet, the mayor. "Since it's a cluster, we had people all identified."
One mission: find the case-contacts
"The big work", continues Étienne Jacquet, "is to manage to trace the case-contacts, which is different from an epidemic where it is generalized and where it is impossible to list the people who have been put in contact . (…) In Les Contamines, we had eleven people in a chalet. Of these eleven people, five were contaminated. And ultimately, a child and an adult were put in contact with the population. There, we realize that we have more than a hundred contact cases. "
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"Can you imagine on the scale of a population like Mulhouse, with the evangelists?" The evangelical gathering in Mulhouse, between 17 and 24 February, would have contributed massively to the spread of the epidemic on French soil. "When you have 1,000 people, it is so exponential that it is almost impossible to have crisis management as it had in Les Contamines-Montjoie."
"No wind of panic"
Instead of giving in to panic under the eyes of the whole of France, the inhabitants of Contamines-Montjoie remained calm. "The big force we had was to remain zen and not to panic the population," rewinds Éric Paris, the village pharmacist. "The town hall did its utmost to immediately remove this wart we had.
Closure of schools but not of public spaces, confinement targeted on case-contacts, close relations with the inhabitants… Les Contamines-Montjoie faced the coronavirus with method: "We had a remarkable population in cold blood", welcomes the mayor. "There was not this panic that everyone promised us. We tried to maintain a village life."
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Since March 17, the village has been confined, like the rest of France. But even if the station had to close a month earlier than usual, the crisis is no longer local. "The soufflé fell back when there was an exponential growth at the national level", retraces the pharmacist, visibly relieved: "It is really the place where confinement is well respected on the whole, and where one feels in security."