Boats in the harbor of the port of Fos-sur-Mer, near Marseille (illustration). – P.MAGNIEN / 20 MINUTES
- From Delhi airport to Marseille via Amsterdam, an IHU scientific publication traces the journey of a sailor from the Indian variant.
- On his arrival in Marseille, he was to embark on a ship. Tested positive, he was placed in solitary confinement.
- This was one of the very first identified cases of this variant in France.
We now know a little more about one of the entry doors of the Indian variant in Marseille. On April 29, the Directorate General of Health (DGS) announced that it had identified two cases of people, “unrelated”, contaminated by the Indian variant in the Bouches-du-Rhône. Marseille researchers from the IHU, in collaboration with the APHM, IRD and the Marins Pompiers de Marseille, retraced the course of one of them. They published their results in a
short study posted on May 21 in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease.
“This patient from Goa boarded at Delhi airport, then passed through Amsterdam airport before landing in Marseille on April 26, 2021, write the co-signatories, Bernard La Scola, Philippe Lavrad, Pierre -Edouard Fournier, Phillippe Colson, Alexandre Lacoste and Didier Raoult. Tested negative 72 hours before boarding, he was detected positive on his arrival in Marseille by an antigen test. “
One of the first five confirmed cases in France
A second nasal swab was taken the next day and sent for analysis to the IHU, confirming the contamination with the Indian variant. With the second Marseille case, it was then, with two people in Gironde and one in Lot-et-Garonne identified, the first five proven cases of this variant on metropolitan territory. The immediate isolation measures made it possible to effectively limit the spread of this variant, which is reputed to be more virulent. To date, the health authorities have not observed any real progression of the Indian variant in metropolitan France, Marseille or in the PACA region where the so-called English strain represents more than 75% of the cases detected, according to the data of Public Health France
“This case perfectly illustrates the role played by ports like Marseille”, add the authors of the study, who recall various epidemic episodes that have occurred throughout history. “We know that the plague was imported into the West by a Genoese ship, which docked in the port of Marseille in 1347,” notes historian Claude Gauvard.
“Ensuring detection is essential, especially for crew members, in order to avoid a new Diamond Princess,” conclude the authors of this publication. As a reminder, this cruise ship with 3,700 passengers and crew was quarantined in Japan at the very start of the pandemic. Nearly 700 contaminations had been identified there, while a single passenger boarding would have initially been carrying the virus.