“For several weeks, dozens of cats have been suffering from a mysterious disease. The cause of this excess mortality is not identified. » This scenario introduces online play All Risk Agents, created by the National Food Safety Agency (Anses). By slipping into the shoes of a young scientist newly recruited by the organization, our mission is to prevent a zoonosis – the transmission of a disease from an animal to a human being –, the basis of pandemics in recent decades. , in particular that linked to Covid-19.
What’s killing those poor cats? Is this virus transmitted between these felines and human beings? What measures should be taken to stop the epidemic? What tests to use? So many questions to which 20 minutes tried to answer by testing this fifteen-minute game. Attention, spoilers (the whole game in fact) are present in this article.
Emails and documents available
“It’s panic among cat owners”, immediately slips the director of ANSES (in the game, eh). The first step is to understand why more and more of these felines are losing their lives. Four minutes top time to answer this question. Several documents are placed on our desk. Beep: a message from the French Network for Animal Health falls into our mailbox. Beep. Another message from the animal disease lab. It would seem that the track of an infectious disease of viral or bacterial origin is to be preferred. We validate our answer.
It gets complicated… “Unknown contaminations are observed in patients in hospitals in several cities”, warns Public Health France. Are cats infecting humans? We ask a laboratory to take samples from sick cats and the results come in: it would be a herpes-type virus. Next step: understand where this virus comes from and how it is transmitted. The stopwatch is ticking. The pigeon track falls into the water. Our gaze now turns to the mice. Some research and time is up. We choose the route of transmission from the mouse to the cat by the digestive route, then from the cat to the human being by the respiratory route.
Third and final test: take measures to stop the epidemic and find reliable tests to diagnose sick cats. Apparently, the population is starting to worry (and we understand it…) More and more humans are dying of the “cat virus”, called Fel-X (yes, they are funny at ANSES). The director gives us this time five minutes to find a test.
Result: 160 people infected
Several experts arrive on the screen, on the premises of ANSES, to give their recommendations. A whole host of documents are also accessible. Among them, we have the results of the sensitivity rate for every test! AB 5451 seems to be the most reliable. Among a whole bunch of other more or less useful information (sorry Comet, the president’s cat, but we don’t care if you’re contaminated): the laboratory results on the most effective way to detect the virus. And it is the ocular secretions and the oropharyngeal swab that are the most effective.
The five minutes are up. We decide to favor the confinement of cats and the wearing of FFP2 masks in their presence, since transmission is by the respiratory route. Verdict from the director of ANSES: we have better understood this virus, managed to keep the number of cases below the acceptable level and reinforced the reliability of the test. 18,258 cats were still infected and 160 people infected, but apparently that’s not a lot.
“This situation could happen,” explains Charlotte Dunoyer, Scientific Director of Animal Health and Welfare at ANSES, who worked on the project. The agency collaborated with many experts to make the script as believable as possible. “This type of phenomenon is becoming more and more frequent due to the increase in the world’s population and global warming. We are therefore more vigilant with viruses that are transmitted from animal to human. “ANSES also wanted to show that this type of situation “requires collective and multidisciplinary expertise because it is very complex”. And that to become an All-Risk Agent, you don’t necessarily have to follow the advice of Mikael Catman, a media veterinarian who doesn’t know much about human disease.
* All Risks Agents, free video game available this way