The directors of the Emergency Health Care Service of France (SAMU), François Braun, and the Association of Emergency Physicians of France, Patrick Pelloux, have claimed that the coronavirus originating in China “is controlled” and has placed the population to “not be afraid” despite the detection of the first three cases in France and the confirmation of 41 deaths in China.
“It is useless to be afraid,” Braun and Pelloux said this Saturday at a press conference. “We have people who call us because they have crossed into someone of Asian origin in the street who has blown their nose,” said Pelloux, who asks “to stop collective hysteria.”
“You have to know how to manage it. There will be several thousand people who will die this year from the flu and that does not appear in the headlines,” he added. “We have three cases in France that are not even serious. It is a controlled epidemic. We must trust the authorities. We must trust the WHO” (World Health Organization), he said.
For his part, Braun has explained that “for the moment … there has not been a peak of calls. There is no panic.” “If it were a crisis that lasts beyond a week, ten days, we will move on to the scenario of exceptional situations, with more significant mobilizations of personnel,” he said.
“This is what was done with the H1N1 flu (in 2009). We are not at all in this area, much less,” Braun said. In France “the organization plans in case of epidemic risk are well established”. “We have updates every morning with the Ministry of Health and the General Directorate of Health to find out what the real risk is if it extends,” Braun concluded.
The Minister of Health, Agnès Buzyn, has urged the population not to go to the emergency room so as not to collapse and first call 15, emergency telephone number.
Other countries have also detected cases of the new coronavirus. So far, two cases have been recorded in South Korea and two in Japan, Hong Kong, Macao and Vietnam. One has been registered in Taiwan, just like in Singapore. In addition, three cases have been registered in Thailand, but two of them have already been cured.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has resolved on Thursday that it is “too early” to declare the international public health emergency following the outbreak of coronavirus, although it has warned that in China it does constitute an emergency.
