PARIS: France is evacuating its nationals from China in response to the coronavirus outbreak, with the Foreign Ministry sending two planes to the city of Wuhan.
Around 500 people returned to France and were isolated for 14 days in the southern seaside resort of Carry le Rouet, near Marseille. There were 200 French nationals on the first flight and 120 on the second. The second plane also carried around 300 foreigners who had been evacuated at the request of governments in Europe and South America.
A French diplomatic source told Arab News that passengers had been isolated because doctors needed to know if any of them had contracted the virus. Two of the arrivals were suspected of having coronavirus, but their test results were negative. The others are being tested daily by doctors.
Among the foreigners who arrived with the French are some whose governments have asked that they be quarantined before returning to their home countries. Other governments have said they will collect their nationals from Istres, also near Marseille, to be quarantined in their own countries.
The source said that French doctors believed it was the very beginning of the epidemic, which would probably peak in April or May.
The source added that the epidemic was having an economic impact because of the measures being taken by countries, some of them necessary and others not, such as the closing of borders and the interruption of flights.
A French microbiologist, Didier Raoult, who is a research specialist of infectious diseases and whose team is taking care of the repatriated French nationals in Carry le Rouet, told the Journal du dimanche that he refused to consider coronavirus a “blind killer.”
He said that the current death toll due to coronavirus was equal to 2 percent of all viral pneumonia cases in hospitals, and that this figure would probably shrink once negative cases were accounted for.
He doubted that the number of deaths from the virus would increase significantly in France to overtake the number of deaths from pneumonia, and that social media rumors together with a fear that politicians were not doing enough was making people overreact.
Raoult was asked about the quarantined individuals in Carry le Rouet. He suggested that they be tested once, then a second time after three days, then to release them if they tested negative without holding them for the full 14-day period.
