The three people confirmed to have contracted the Wuhan coronavirus in France are in good condition, says the country’s public health chief Jerome Salomon.
On Friday, France confirmed the first three cases of the virus in Europe, with two patients hospitalized in Paris and the other in Bordeaux. No new cases have been confirmed since then but several people were being monitored.
“Its virulence, its dangerousness is evaluated based on the ratio of the number of deaths to the number of cases. We do see the number of deaths increase but at a slower pace than the number of cases. At maximum, we have a three percent mortality rate, and we think that there are even more cases than those that have been confirmed, which means that the mortality rate automatically decreases and it’s already a lot less than what we have observed with SARS, which is pretty good news.” said Salomon.
In response, France established screening measures for flights arriving from the Chinese province of Wuhan. Salomon told reporters the measures would be expanded from today so on-arrival medical teams at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris would monitor passengers on all flights from China.
The vast majority of the cases and all of the 41 confirmed deaths to date have been in China but, as well as France, the virus has been detected in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Nepal and the United States.
(Production: Yonathan Van der Voort, Ardee Napolitano)
Copyright 2018 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.
