COVID-19: Pandémie

[Normand Hamel]

WHO boss supported by China is now giving the nation too much credit on coronavirus, critics claim

The Telegraph

If the World Health Organisation’s verdict is to be believed, China’s behaviour in the coronavirus crisis has been exemplary.

Officials who returned from a “joint mission” to the country in February described how China had “rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history”.

WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, claimed that China’s lockdown strategy had “bought time for the world”.

However, concerns are now growing that far from buying time, China has put the world on the back foot by publishing data about the spread of the disease that is at best inconsistent and at worst heavily massaged.

It has also been accused of silencing whistle-blowers, and overlooking early evidence of the infectiousness of the disease.

Chinese authorities have changed the way they count coronavirus cases no less than eight times since the outbreak began, and only this week started counting asymptomatic cases in its official statistics.

When the daily counts started in January, the China’s National Health Commission’s definition of a coronavirus case was much more restrictive than it is now.

Patients only qualified as suspected cases if they displayed all four of a list of specific symptoms - including pneumonia indicated by a chest radiograph – and had also either travelled or had indirect contact with a Wuhan market within the previous fortnight.

Inevitably, tens of thousands of milder cases of coronavirus slipped through unrecorded.

Even now that the definition has been tightened, senior politicians and US intelligence have expressed concerns that the statistics released by China may be fiction.

Certainly the statistics look out of kilter. China was affected weeks before any other nation, but has only reported around 82,500 cases so far.

By comparison, the US which had its first coronavirus case in mid-January, has reported more than 245,000 – more than three times China’s figure, according to data collated by Johns Hopkins University in America. The UK, whose population is less than five per cent of China’s – and which has lagged far behind on testing - has already reported 34,173 cases. This is 41 per cent of China’s total.

Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith, an outspoken China critic, told the Telegraph: "There has already been a hit on the Chinese economy as a result of this, so their desperate concern is to alleviate that as quickly as possible - and my concern is that in that drive to do so, the figures for what is happening in China are being obscured.”

He added: “I really don’t believe these figures. I think they’ve suppressed it massively.”

A WHO spokesman said: “WHO’s mandate is to keep all people safe everywhere and this is what our scientists and public health experts are doing. The membership of the UN is decided by the countries. This does not affect WHO’s mandate as an evidence-based organization that safeguards the global public health.”

Allies of Dr Tedros point to the fact that, as the former health minister then foreign minister of Ethiopia, he is naturally given to diplomacy – and that praising China ensures the nation continues sharing critical information.

However, critics note that China was highly influential in him gaining the position in the first place.

According to reports, Chinese diplomats campaigned hard for him in the 2017 leadership election, using the promise of Beijing’s financial muscle to put pressure on developing countries to do the same – helping him to stave off competition from Britain’s David Nabarro.

The official toll of the number of cases is not the only point of information that has shaped the way other countries prepared for coronavirus. Chinese authorities also peddled the line that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission - apparently overlooking early signs that patients were catching it from each other.

A paper published in The Lancet and co-authored by doctors who worked at Jin Yin-tan hospital in Wuhan noted that the wife of the very first patient to die of coronavirus also "presented with pneumonia and was hospitalised in the isolation ward”.

The study - Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China - stops short of saying she caught coronavirus from him, but points out that she had “no known history of exposure to the market”.

The same study also claims that just one of the four earliest known coronavirus patients had links to Huanan Seafood Market - casting doubt on the popular notion advanced in Wuhan that the disease originated in wet markets.

There, a shrimp seller named Wei Guixian, was identified by the Wall Street Journal as one of the very first patients, after she began experiencing symptoms on December 10.

However, experts now believe that the disease began to spread in China much earlier than that. A little-discussed graph in the Lancet paper claims that the first coronavirus patient started feeling the effects of the disease on 1 December – a week and a half earlier.

Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post claims to have seen confidential government documents that suggest the first confirmed coronavirus patient may have contracted the disease on 17 November. If true, knowing about it early on would have had huge ramifications.

Research by the University of Southampton suggests that 95 per cent of infections could have been avoided if China had acted three weeks earlier.

Professor Larry Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights, told the Telegraph: "It delayed for three to four weeks before reporting a novel virus to the WHO which probably cost hundreds of thousands of lives globally…Its record does not deserve praise."

The first whistle-blower was Ai Fen, a senior doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital, who on 30 December posted information about the new virus on the WeChat social media platform.

Later that day, Dr Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at the same hospital, also posted information on WeChat about the virus he believed to be Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or Sars.

He and Dr Ai were both reprimanded, and Dr Wenliang was instructed by the hospital to write a “reflection” on the spread of false information.

Within two days, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau had reportedly called another eight doctors in for questioning after they discussed the virus on social media. According to Chinese media, the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered laboratories that were testing samples for the new virus to stop doing so, and to destroy any existing samples they had.

John Mackenzie, a member of the World Health Organisation’s emergency committee and emeritus professor at Curtin University in Australia, told the Financial Times in February that some aspects of China’s response was “reprehensible” and that he believes they tried to “keep the figures quiet for a while”.

Mr Mackenzie’s misgivings were backed by numerous reports in Chinese media, but Dr Tedros distanced himself from Mr Mackenzie’s critical remarks.

He said that he could not comment whether or not China had hidden the start of the coronavirus outbreak but that if China did conceal the extent of the outbreak “it really defeats logic” because there would have been a higher number of cases around the world.

That was in February, when the number of non-Chinese cases was still “very small”. The global death toll is now around 54,000.

The WHO position is in contrast to the organisation’s handling of the 2003 SARS crisis when Gro Harlem Brundtland was director general.

When the WHO declared a global health alert for SARS, there were just over 150 cases worldwide. When Covid-19 was named a public health emergency of international concern, there were nearly 10,000.

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of a paper on the SARS response, said that the WHO did not use the new range of tools that have since been put at its disposal.

“Very often the WHO seems to be downplaying the Chinese response in the early stage of the crisis…It might be diplomatically unwise to criticise [China] but I do believe the WHO could take a more balanced approach."

This is rejected by the WHO, which says that it co-ordinates the international response to Covid-19 in a “transparent way”, publishing on its website information that can help countries and individuals respond to the crisis.

“Part of WHO’s mandate is to inform all member states and we do it both through bilateral exchanges and through weekly briefings where all countries are invited. Throughout the outbreak, there have been regular and frequent meetings and discussions between WHO leadership and technical experts from around the world,” a spokesman said. 

Indeed, Dr Nabarro – who fought Dr Tedros to become director general and is now a WHO envoy – suggested that his former opponent may have got the balance right. “When this started, we were able to benefit from china making the structure of the virus available in the public domain extremely quickly and we’re grateful for that and we’re grateful for information that has been received about the virus.”

“Let’s do all the post mortems of all governments when we’ve got through this. We will all be accountable and that’s how it should be.” 

Professor Gostin, who was Dr Nabarro’s spokesman during the leadership race, was less charitable. “When we look back and see so much praise going towards China and its system will the message be that civil rights aren't as important as we believe them to be? I believe in telling truth to power.'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/03/boss-supported-china-now-giving-nation-much-credit-coronavirus/

[p_xavier]

https://www.thepostmillennial.com/world-health-organization-blame

Sur le sujet, en plus des fiascos récents des masques et de Taïwan.

 

Quote

OPINION

The World Health Organization is to blame

On March 3, the virus had already gone global and impacted tens of thousands, but the WHO was more concerned with language policing.

Anna SlatzMontreal, QC

30th March 20204 mins read

The coronavirus crisis feels as though it has entered a new stage in its life cycle. From panic and fear, we have graduated to the blame game. Perhaps because we are so bored and anxious, cooped up in our indefinite lockdowns, we are desperately searching for someone to blame for the situation we find ourselves in.

Most of us will turn to politicians. No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall within, there is plenty of blame to be cast upon the elected officials who shoulda-coulda-woulda acted in a way which might have circumvented this hellscape.

I see this type of blame all of the time, with viral videos and “gotcha” tweets dug up from these last two months showing politicians disregarding the threat of coronavirus and encouraging their citizens to live life as normal.

Politicians will even cast the blame upon each other. Most recently, Nancy Pelosi condemned Donald Trump for not having the foresight to predict the coronavirus crisis the United States is currently grappling with. In turn, Nancy Pelosi herself was caught in a video from late February encouraging her constituents to congregate, calling it “safe.”

Some of us will blame the media. Certainly, I have even given my share of condemnation to the journalists who continued to push false narratives in January and February despite rapidly rising global death and infection tolls. Some news outlets, like Vox, have actually had to scrub articles that were so callously incorrect in their predictions that it was irresponsible to leave them up, while some journalists have even come out and expressed remorse for not having alerted their readers sooner to the threat of coronavirus.

Anna Slatz | အန်နာ@YesThatAnna

Vox journalist admits to having fears about the coronavirus in February and personally preparing for it but not informing readers because..... Peer pressure? The WHO? Worried about being wrong???

THIS IS YOUR MEDIA.

92

12:20 AM - Mar 28, 2020

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But it would be wise to keep in mind that behind every ill-advised policy and comment made by politicians and journalists, there was always a caveat.

“Experts say.”

Experts said so many things we know now were not just wrong, but downright irresponsible.

And who were these experts who were expertly guiding us into a pandemic?

The World Health Organization.

From December to January, the World Health Organization was quelling the concerns of the world by advising us that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19. These findings came from the Chinese Government, and the WHO did not seek to question or confirm them in any independent fashion.

World Health Organization (WHO)✔@WHO

Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.

17.4K

7:18 AM - Jan 14, 2020

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As late as January 12, the WHO continued to advise that there was absolutely nothing to be worried about, going so far as state “[the] WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China based on the information currently available on this event.”

On January 28, the WHO claimed that China was demonstrating “transparency” in the information they were sharing about the virus, and still assured the world that there was no reason to be alarmed. It stated that China had a “commitment to protecting the world’s people,” heaping praise on China for its response.

At this exact time, Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan, was slowly dying from the virus. Wenliang had tried to alert the world to that the Chinese government was hiding details on the real situation, and that the virus was far more deadly and transmittable than they were letting on. The WHO never commented on his findings or statements.

On January 30, the WHO again stated “there is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. WHO doesn’t recommend limiting trade and movement.” By this time, the virus had already spread to the United States and several other countries.

Into February, the WHO continued to insist that travel restrictions were unnecessary. Governments were listening to the advice of the world’s leading health body, and insisting their borders were not to be closed. Canada, the United States, and most European nations declined the need to ebb the flow of traffic from even coronavirus hotbeds.

In lockstep, pundits began asserting, with the backing of the ever-powerful “experts say,” that there was no science to suggest closing the borders to coronavirus hotbeds would work to slow the viral trend. Politicians followed suit. The “experts” said it wasn’t necessary, after all.

On March 3, the virus had already gone global and impacted tens of thousands, but the WHO was more concerned with language policing than providing crucial infection mitigation information for the public.

World Health Organization (WHO)✔@WHO

 · Mar 2, 2020

When talking about #COVID19, certain words & language may have a negative meaning for people and fuel stigmatizing attitudes http://bit.ly/32HZe0q #coronavirus

World Health Organization (WHO)✔@WHO

These words & language can perpetuate negative stereotypes or assumptions, strengthen false associations between #COVID19 & other factors, create widespread fear, or dehumanise those who have the disease http://bit.ly/32HZe0q #coronavirus https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1234597035275362309 …

World Health Organization (WHO)✔@WHO

When talking about #COVID19, certain words & language may have a negative meaning for people and fuel stigmatizing attitudes http://bit.ly/32HZe0q #coronavirus

2,721

5:57 PM - Mar 2, 2020

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Again in lockstep, crusades against racism and de-stigmatization hit the ground again. The very same day the WHO decried racism, multiple politicians came out to the media and asserted the same concern. Dianne Feinstein and Scott Weiner both spoke out against the lack of business in Chinatown, with Weiner even attending a mass event in Los Angeles aimed at “standing in solidarity with the Chinese-American community.” In Canada, a campaign aimed at ramping up business in Chinese districts began.

The WHO was still standing by its line on border closures being ineffective on March 13, a date when Italy’s death toll alone had surged past 1,000, and the global infection toll stood at 126,000.

That same time, the WHO would finally declare the coronavirus a pandemic. Countries which had lagged because of their great “expertise” began to rapidly implement policies everyone knew should have been put in place weeks prior.

Quarantines began to be enforced. Borders began to close. People began to panic. Planes began to ground. Shelves started to empty.

The blame game ramped up. Everyone apparently knew something which could have prevented this crisis from reaching the state it had, or something which ought not to have been done. And yet… Why had nothing been done?

Because the “experts” had said nothing had to be. And those in power listened, nodded, and parroted.

“Experts say…”

I often wonder what the “experts” will say next. But one thing I can assure you is that I will very likely be doing the exact opposite of whatever it is they “expertly” recommend.

 

[man with the golden gun]

Le ‎2020‎-‎04‎-‎03 à 23:02, Normand Hamel a dit :

WHO boss supported by China is now giving the nation too much credit on coronavirus, critics claim

The Telegraph

If the World Health Organisation’s verdict is to be believed, China’s behaviour in the coronavirus crisis has been exemplary.

Officials who returned from a “joint mission” to the country in February described how China had “rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history”.

WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, claimed that China’s lockdown strategy had “bought time for the world”.

However, concerns are now growing that far from buying time, China has put the world on the back foot by publishing data about the spread of the disease that is at best inconsistent and at worst heavily massaged.

It has also been accused of silencing whistle-blowers, and overlooking early evidence of the infectiousness of the disease.

Chinese authorities have changed the way they count coronavirus cases no less than eight times since the outbreak began, and only this week started counting asymptomatic cases in its official statistics.

When the daily counts started in January, the China’s National Health Commission’s definition of a coronavirus case was much more restrictive than it is now.

Patients only qualified as suspected cases if they displayed all four of a list of specific symptoms - including pneumonia indicated by a chest radiograph – and had also either travelled or had indirect contact with a Wuhan market within the previous fortnight.

Inevitably, tens of thousands of milder cases of coronavirus slipped through unrecorded.

Even now that the definition has been tightened, senior politicians and US intelligence have expressed concerns that the statistics released by China may be fiction.

Certainly the statistics look out of kilter. China was affected weeks before any other nation, but has only reported around 82,500 cases so far.

By comparison, the US which had its first coronavirus case in mid-January, has reported more than 245,000 – more than three times China’s figure, according to data collated by Johns Hopkins University in America. The UK, whose population is less than five per cent of China’s – and which has lagged far behind on testing - has already reported 34,173 cases. This is 41 per cent of China’s total.

Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith, an outspoken China critic, told the Telegraph: "There has already been a hit on the Chinese economy as a result of this, so their desperate concern is to alleviate that as quickly as possible - and my concern is that in that drive to do so, the figures for what is happening in China are being obscured.”

He added: “I really don’t believe these figures. I think they’ve suppressed it massively.”

A WHO spokesman said: “WHO’s mandate is to keep all people safe everywhere and this is what our scientists and public health experts are doing. The membership of the UN is decided by the countries. This does not affect WHO’s mandate as an evidence-based organization that safeguards the global public health.”

Allies of Dr Tedros point to the fact that, as the former health minister then foreign minister of Ethiopia, he is naturally given to diplomacy – and that praising China ensures the nation continues sharing critical information.

However, critics note that China was highly influential in him gaining the position in the first place.

According to reports, Chinese diplomats campaigned hard for him in the 2017 leadership election, using the promise of Beijing’s financial muscle to put pressure on developing countries to do the same – helping him to stave off competition from Britain’s David Nabarro.

The official toll of the number of cases is not the only point of information that has shaped the way other countries prepared for coronavirus. Chinese authorities also peddled the line that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission - apparently overlooking early signs that patients were catching it from each other.

A paper published in The Lancet and co-authored by doctors who worked at Jin Yin-tan hospital in Wuhan noted that the wife of the very first patient to die of coronavirus also "presented with pneumonia and was hospitalised in the isolation ward”.

The study - Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China - stops short of saying she caught coronavirus from him, but points out that she had “no known history of exposure to the market”.

The same study also claims that just one of the four earliest known coronavirus patients had links to Huanan Seafood Market - casting doubt on the popular notion advanced in Wuhan that the disease originated in wet markets.

There, a shrimp seller named Wei Guixian, was identified by the Wall Street Journal as one of the very first patients, after she began experiencing symptoms on December 10.

However, experts now believe that the disease began to spread in China much earlier than that. A little-discussed graph in the Lancet paper claims that the first coronavirus patient started feeling the effects of the disease on 1 December – a week and a half earlier.

Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post claims to have seen confidential government documents that suggest the first confirmed coronavirus patient may have contracted the disease on 17 November. If true, knowing about it early on would have had huge ramifications.

Research by the University of Southampton suggests that 95 per cent of infections could have been avoided if China had acted three weeks earlier.

Professor Larry Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights, told the Telegraph: "It delayed for three to four weeks before reporting a novel virus to the WHO which probably cost hundreds of thousands of lives globally…Its record does not deserve praise."

The first whistle-blower was Ai Fen, a senior doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital, who on 30 December posted information about the new virus on the WeChat social media platform.

Later that day, Dr Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at the same hospital, also posted information on WeChat about the virus he believed to be Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or Sars.

He and Dr Ai were both reprimanded, and Dr Wenliang was instructed by the hospital to write a “reflection” on the spread of false information.

Within two days, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau had reportedly called another eight doctors in for questioning after they discussed the virus on social media. According to Chinese media, the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered laboratories that were testing samples for the new virus to stop doing so, and to destroy any existing samples they had.

John Mackenzie, a member of the World Health Organisation’s emergency committee and emeritus professor at Curtin University in Australia, told the Financial Times in February that some aspects of China’s response was “reprehensible” and that he believes they tried to “keep the figures quiet for a while”.

Mr Mackenzie’s misgivings were backed by numerous reports in Chinese media, but Dr Tedros distanced himself from Mr Mackenzie’s critical remarks.

He said that he could not comment whether or not China had hidden the start of the coronavirus outbreak but that if China did conceal the extent of the outbreak “it really defeats logic” because there would have been a higher number of cases around the world.

That was in February, when the number of non-Chinese cases was still “very small”. The global death toll is now around 54,000.

The WHO position is in contrast to the organisation’s handling of the 2003 SARS crisis when Gro Harlem Brundtland was director general.

When the WHO declared a global health alert for SARS, there were just over 150 cases worldwide. When Covid-19 was named a public health emergency of international concern, there were nearly 10,000.

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of a paper on the SARS response, said that the WHO did not use the new range of tools that have since been put at its disposal.

“Very often the WHO seems to be downplaying the Chinese response in the early stage of the crisis…It might be diplomatically unwise to criticise [China] but I do believe the WHO could take a more balanced approach."

This is rejected by the WHO, which says that it co-ordinates the international response to Covid-19 in a “transparent way”, publishing on its website information that can help countries and individuals respond to the crisis.

“Part of WHO’s mandate is to inform all member states and we do it both through bilateral exchanges and through weekly briefings where all countries are invited. Throughout the outbreak, there have been regular and frequent meetings and discussions between WHO leadership and technical experts from around the world,” a spokesman said. 

Indeed, Dr Nabarro – who fought Dr Tedros to become director general and is now a WHO envoy – suggested that his former opponent may have got the balance right. “When this started, we were able to benefit from china making the structure of the virus available in the public domain extremely quickly and we’re grateful for that and we’re grateful for information that has been received about the virus.”

“Let’s do all the post mortems of all governments when we’ve got through this. We will all be accountable and that’s how it should be.” 

Professor Gostin, who was Dr Nabarro’s spokesman during the leadership race, was less charitable. “When we look back and see so much praise going towards China and its system will the message be that civil rights aren't as important as we believe them to be? I believe in telling truth to power.'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/03/boss-supported-china-now-giving-nation-much-credit-coronavirus/

C'est certain que dès demain, je vais relire un des bons romans d'un de mes héros d'enfance, l'aventurier Bob Morane: L'ombre Jaune fait trembler la Terre.

[p_xavier]

Un gros grain de sel à prendre avant la lecture :

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/

[budgebandit]

April 6th 2020 - Boris Johnson moved to intensive care

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52192604

Coronavirus: Boris Johnson moved to intensive care as symptoms 'worsen'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been moved to intensive care in hospital after his coronavirus symptoms "worsened", Downing Street has said.

A spokesman said he was moved on the advice of his medical team and is receiving "excellent care".

Mr Johnson has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputise "where necessary", the spokesman added.

The prime minister, 55, was admitted to hospital in London with "persistent symptoms" on Sunday evening.

A No 10 statement read: "The prime minister has been under the care of doctors at St Thomas' Hospital, in London, after being admitted with persistent symptoms of coronavirus.

"Over the course of [Monday] afternoon, the condition of the prime minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the intensive care unit at the hospital."

It continued: "The PM is receiving excellent care, and thanks all NHS staff for their hard work and dedication."

Chancellor Rishi Sunak said his thoughts were with the prime minister and his pregnant partner, Carrie Symonds, and that Mr Johnson would "come out of this even stronger".

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer described it as "terribly sad news".

"All the country's thoughts are with the prime minister and his family during this incredibly difficult time," he added.

Mr Johnson was initially taken to hospital for routine tests after testing positive for coronavirus 10 days ago. His symptoms included a high temperature and a cough.

Earlier on Monday, he tweeted that he was in "good spirits".

After very, very little information was shared today, the prime minister was taken into intensive care at around 19:00 BST.

We've been told he is still conscious, but his condition has worsened over the course of the afternoon.

And he has been moved to intensive care as a precaution in case he needs ventilation to get through this illness.

The statement from Downing Street makes clear he is receiving excellent care and he wants to thank all of the NHS staff.

But something important has changed, and he has felt it necessary to ask his foreign secretary to deputise for him where needs be.

That is a completely different message from what we have heard over the past 18 hours or so, where it was continually "the prime minister is in touch" and "he is in charge" - almost like everything is business as usual.

But clearly being in intensive care changes everything.

Last month, the prime minister's spokesman said if Mr Johnson was unwell and unable to work, Mr Raab, as the first secretary of state, would stand in.

It comes as the number of coronavirus hospital deaths in the UK reached 5,373 - an increase of 439 in a day.

The Department of Health and Social Care said there were now 51,608 confirmed coronavirus cases.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she was "sending [Mr Johnson] every good wish".

And Mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted that St Thomas' Hospital had "some of the finest medical staff in the world" and that the prime minister "couldn't be in safer hands".

Speaking during the government's daily coronavirus briefing earlier on Monday, Mr Raab stressed that the prime minister had been continuing to run the government from hospital.

Asked whether that was appropriate, Mr Raab said Mr Johnson would "take the medical advice that he gets from his doctor".

"We have a team... that is full throttle making sure that his directions and his instructions are being implemented," he said.

The foreign secretary added that he had not spoken to the prime minister since Saturday.

On Saturday, Ms Symonds, who is pregnant, said she had spent a week in bed with the main symptoms. She said she had not been tested for the virus.

[Normand Hamel]

9 avril 2020: fosse commune à New York.

Photo: Reuters

[Normand Hamel]

L’Allemagne est-elle vraiment le meilleur modèle à suivre?

Dominique Cambron-Goulet - Le Journal de Montréal

Avec une faible mortalité parmi les cas de COVID-19, l’Allemagne est souvent citée comme un exemple à suivre dans sa gestion de la pandémie du coronavirus. Mais les autorités allemandes préviennent qu’il est trop tôt pour parler de « success story ».

Mardi, la Direction nationale de santé publique du Québec présentait ses scénarios sur les effets de la COVID-19, dont une prévision de décès. La plus optimiste se basait sur l’expérience allemande.   

« L’Allemagne avait vraiment de bons résultats pour les décès », a dit le Dr Richard Massé, conseiller stratégique de la Santé publique, en conférence de presse.   

Il est vrai qu’avec moins de 2 % des cas se terminant en décès, l’Allemagne fait bonne figure comparativement à ses grands voisins européens.   

En France, en Italie et au Royaume-Uni, le taux de mortalité dépasse 10 %.   

« Nous ne sommes qu’au début des événements. Il est beaucoup trop tôt pour parler d’un “success story” », prévient en entrevue Marieke Degen, porte-parole de l’Institut Robert Koch, l’établissement fédéral allemand de santé publique.   

Trois facteurs positifs  

Mme Degen attribue la bonne gestion du virus par l’Allemagne à trois facteurs, soit l’isolement rapide des personnes malades et de leurs proches, une capacité accrue de tests et de soins intensifs, ainsi que la protection des groupes à risque.   

Près de 70 % des gens infectés ont entre 15 et 59 ans, les premières personnes infectées ayant surtout été des jeunes, revenant de vacances de ski, début mars.   

« Mais nous ne sommes qu’au début de l’épidémie et nous voyons le taux de mortalité monter, ce qui s’explique notamment par le fait que nous voyons de plus en plus d’éclosions dans des hôpitaux et des résidences. De plus en plus de personnes âgées sont affectées », souligne Marieke Degen.   

25 000 lits de soins intensifs  

Avec près de 25 000 lits de soins intensifs dans le pays, soit deux fois et demie plus que la France, l’Allemagne est toutefois bien équipée pour permettre aux plus affectés par la maladie de s’en sortir.   

Les Allemands vivent tout de même avec des règles de confinement strictes depuis la mi-mars, dont l’interdiction des rassemblements à partir de deux personnes.   

« Les personnes qui habitent dans un même logement peuvent sortir ensemble, mais s’ils sont un bon groupe, ils risquent de se faire contrôler, à moins d’être vraiment une famille », relate Joshua Riehl au Journal.   

Les règles de confinement sont un peu différentes d’une ville et d’une province à l’autre, rappelle ce travailleur social résidant à Halle, au centre du pays. Mais les écoles sont fermées dans tout le pays et de manière générale, les commerces non essentiels, au moins jusqu’au 19 avril.   

Dans son cas, Joshua Riehl peut encore aller à son lieu de travail, mais pour y faire des consultations à distance.   

« Mon travail est près de ma résidence, alors si je me fais contrôler, ça passe facilement, mais certains de mes collègues dans d’autres villes ont besoin d’avoir des attestations de leur employeur », indique-t-il.   

Aide aux salariés  

Plusieurs personnes ont perdu leur emploi mis sur pause avec la crise, mais en Allemagne il est aussi possible de recevoir des prestations de chômage partielles.   

« Je peux par exemple travailler 50 % de mes heures, qui seront payées au plein salaire par mon employeur et le chômage me versera 60 % de mon salaire pour l’autre moitié de mes heures », explique M. Riehl.   

Ce chômage partiel a permis au pays de se relever rapidement de la crise économique de 2008. Mercredi dernier, des économistes du gouvernement estimaient que le taux de chômage grimperait autour de 5,9 % après la crise du coronavirus.   

ALLEMAGNE       

82,92 M habitants    

124 288 cas   

2736 morts       

Des tests à la tonne  

L’Allemagne (environ 83 millions d’habitants) est aussi parmi les pays populeux où l’on teste le plus et de manière large, avec notamment des tests à l’auto.    

Depuis le 16 mars, environ 350 000 tests sont faits chaque semaine, a compilé l’Institut Robert Koch, d’après les données de 177 laboratoires différents.   

« Nous avons rapidement suggéré de tester à grande échelle parce que nous en avions la capacité en laboratoire. C’est probablement pour cela que nous avons rapidement vu un grand nombre de cas, dont plusieurs avec des symptômes légers », explique Marieke Degen.

https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2020/04/12/lallemagne-est-elle-vraiment-le-meilleur-modele-a-suivre-1

[Normand Hamel]

 

[Normand Hamel]

Un confinement jusqu’au 11 mai, la réouverture progressive des écoles… ce qu’il faut retenir des annonces d’Emmanuel Macron

« Le confinement le plus strict doit encore se poursuivre » même si « l’épidémie commence à marquer le pas », a dit le chef de l’Etat, en détaillant les mesures de déconfinement qui seront mises en place à partir du mois de mai.

https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2020/04/13/confinement-prolonge-jusqu-au-11-mai-reouverture-progressive-des-ecoles-ce-qu-il-faut-retenir-des-annonces-d-emmanuel-macron_6036477_3244.html

[acpnc]

14:46 13 avril 2020 | mise à jour le: 13 avril 2020 à 18:25

Par: Benoit Valois-NadeauMétro

https://journalmetro.com/actualites/2437870/un-test-de-depistage-du-coronavirus-pret-en-30-minutes-bientot-disponible/

Un test de dépistage du coronavirus prêt en 30 minutes bientôt disponible

Photo: Cole Burston/Getty ImagesLes tests pourraient notamment être utilisés dans les aéroports du pays.

Santé Canada a approuvé lundi l’utilisation d’un test de dépistage de la COVID-19 portatif capable de donner des résultats précis en 30 minutes.

Produit par Spartan Bioscience, d’Ottawa, le Spartan Cube est le plus petit analyseur d’ADN portable du monde. De la taille d’une tasse à café, il pèse environ un kilo.

En trois semaines à peine, la société de biotechnologie en a produit une version capable de détecter la présence du coronavirus chez un individu à partir de prélèvements pris dans le nez ou la gorge.

«C’est allé incroyablement vite, mais on avait déjà la plateforme, les technologies et les équipes pour le faire lorsque le gouvernement canadien nous a demandé de se consacrer à la COVID-19, le 19 mars dernier, a expliqué Nicolas Noreau, chef des affaires commerciales chez Spartan.

«Pour nous, c’est simplement un autre test. On utilise une technologie similaire à celle qu’on emploie pour d’autres maladies comme la légionellose ou les infections transmises sexuellement.»

L’entreprise veut être en mesure de fournir le matériel nécessaire pour réaliser de 800 000 à 1 million de tests par mois, d’ici le mois de juillet.

Bien que son utilisation soit actuellement limitée aux professionnels de la santé, l’entreprise affirme que le test automatisé pourrait théoriquement être utilisé par du personnel non spécialisé, et ce, dans plusieurs types d’environnements «comme les aéroports, les postes frontaliers, les cabinets médicaux, les pharmacies, les cliniques et les communautés isolées».

Il en coûte de 8 000 à 10 000$ par Cube et de 70 à 80$ pour chaque tampon nécessaire aux prélèvements.

Le marché canadien d’abord

Lundi, lors de son point de presse quotidien, le premier ministre du Québec François Legault a indiqué que son gouvernement avait commandé le matériel pour réaliser 200 000 tests. Les premières livraisons sont attendues au mois de mai.

Ce nouveau test a été développé grâce au financement du Conseil national de recherches du Canada et l’entreprise entend dédier l’ensemble de sa production au marché canadien pour l’instant.

«On reçoit des appels tous les jours de gouvernements et d’entreprises prêts à acheter notre production pour les 24 prochains mois, mais on veut garder ça au Canada, affirme M. Noreau. On va remplir les besoins du pays, ensuite on pourra aider ailleurs.»

Spartan désire également cibler le secteur privé dans un proche avenir.

«La première étape, ce sont les gouvernements, pour la santé de la population. Mais on reçoit aussi également beaucoup de demandes d’entreprises qui voudraient tester leurs employés, en alimentation par exemple. D’ici un mois, on sera aussi capable de remplir les demandes de l’industrie», estime Nicolas Noreau.