Doctor Marc Van Ranst – © RTBF
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In Hubei Province in China, 2,250 people have already died of the coronavirus, and 63,000 have been infected. Among them, a septuagenarian patient developed symptoms 27 days after being infected. But that does not mean that the quarantine period must be increased, explains Dr Marc Van Ranst, epidemiologist responsible for the Belgian reference laboratory on coronavirus (KULeuven): “27 days is an exception. ‘average incubation is 5.2 days “. This should not be interpreted as a transformation of the virus, according to him: “For a quarantine, we propose a duration of two weeks. That is really enough”.
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What worries this virologist is rather the multiplication of outbreaks. In Iran, five people have already died from the virus. In South Korea, the number of people infected doubled in a few days: 433. It is the second country after China to have such a large number of sick people. In Geneva, the boss of the World Health Organization (WHO) remains moderately optimistic: “Our situation is that we can still contain the epidemic although the window of opportunity is narrowing” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
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For its part,Doctor Marc Van Ranst says: “I think that now all the criteria for declaring a pandemic are met. It is an epidemic which is transmissible from man to man, and which is present for the moment in several countries and on several continents. So we can speak well of a pandemic “. According to this specialist, the virus will settle permanently for several years as already three other types of coronavirus have done.
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