HANTAVIRUS : tout COMPRENDRE à ce VIRUS qui inquiète

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Should we fear a new global epidemic? The MV Ond is sailing this Tuesday, May 12, towards the Netherlands after the evacuation under high protection in the Spanish archipelago of the Canaries of 122 passengers and crew members of this cruise ship where a dantairus outbreak was detected. In France, a case was detected in a woman who had travelled on board the ship. Her condition is critical, she is reportedly in intensive care and according to the latest information that has just come in from AFP, she is now breathing with the help of an artificial lung. In total, there are now 11 patients classified as confirmed cases of dantavirus, the death toll is three, all passengers of the ship. In France, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu called this morning for closer coordination of health protocols in the European Union, while the WHO reiterated that it was now up to the health authorities of the States to supervise and control the evolution of the health of the people concerned. The tension is palpable.

[00:00:58]The enterovirus, whose strain is believed to be in Argentina, is nevertheless reviving, against our will, the specter of Covid and the global pandemic. So, what do we know about this virus? What are these symptoms, these risks of transmission? What are the health protocols in France, in Europe, and the recommendations of the WHO?

[00:01:15]What rules has each country chosen for quarantines? And what lessons can be learned from the Covid-19 pandemic? To answer these questions, we are exceptionally welcoming four guests tonight on "Question of the Evening". Marie Jaspar, good evening.

[00:01:28]Good evening.

[00:01:29]You are an infectious disease specialist, lecturer in the infectious and tropical diseases department of Saint-Antoine Sorbonne Hospital, University.

[00:01:36]Thank you for accepting our invitation.

[00:01:38]Orian Gibau is by your side.

[00:01:40]Good evening.

[00:01:41]Good evening.

[00:01:41]You are a lecturer in political science at Paris 8, a member of the Institut de France and a specialist in international institutions of global health governance.

[00:01:49]Still on set, William Odurau, good evening.

[00:01:51]Good evening.

[00:01:52]You are a journalist at Le Monde, a specialist in disinformation and fact-checking, and you have just published A World History of Covid, in which you go over in detail the chronology of Covid and public policies related to Covid.

[00:02:05]Finally, remotely, Sylvie Brillant.

[00:02:07]Good evening.

[00:02:08]Good evening.

[00:02:09]You are in Geneva because you are the chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO). In this capacity, you are the one who oversees the work of the organizational science division and you were previously director of the department for prevention and preparedness for epidemics and pandemics.

[00:02:24]You have worked on Covid-19, bird flu and also the ZIKA virus, which is also the case for our guests who are here in the studio. Thank you to the four of you for accepting our invitation to the evening question.

[00:02:50]Nearly 150 people from 23 countries spent several weeks on board this ship in what must have been a very distressing situation. Our work is not finished. The WHO will continue to work closely with experts from all affected countries.

[00:03:05]The WHO still believes that the global health risk remains low. To date, 11 cases have been reported, including three deaths. These 11 cases all involve passengers or crew members of the ship. All suspected and confirmed cases have been placed in isolation and cared for under strict medical supervision, which has minimized any risk of spread. For now, there is no indication that we are witnessing the beginning of a larger-scale epidemic.

[00:03:34]But of course, the situation could change. And given the virus's long incubation period, it is possible that we will see new cases emerge in the coming weeks.

[00:03:46]The voice of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, who perhaps lays out a little bit of the latest events and then the issues surrounding this antairus. It is brilliant, it is to you that I turn first. I remind you, you are the chief scientist of the WHO. How did this evacuation unfold and what were the stakes and health risks for you?

[00:04:07]Well first, the evacuation, it is uh uh it is developed under the aegis of the international health regulations because we have a regulation that our member states, our 194 member states have signed and which gives the WHO the power to coordinate this kind of international response. And indeed, it was international since all these people on the boat actually came from different countries. And the objective was really to ensure that there was no additional chain of transmission because the people on the boat had already been exposed to the risk of this virus for a few weeks. And so, it was very important to be able to repatriate them to their country to care facilities which could on the one hand ensure the monitoring and treatment of people who had been infected, but also ensure that the people who were in fact contacts, contact persons on this ship, do not develop symptoms and do not contaminate other people in their vicinity. So it was, sorry, please, go ahead.

[00:05:21]No, so it was really a way of ensuring that it was a very localized epidemic since it was on a ship, but it was necessary to make sure that it did not spread beyond the ship and that it remained contained, that there were no other chains of transmission. So, we can understand the need to disembark these people who have been confined inside the ship for many weeks. Perhaps what was surprising was why not confine these people in one place, in a protected military space. Why were they sent back to their country? Was there not a risk of losing track of these people, of leaving them to the States, perhaps with different legislation and health protocols, was there not a risk of the virus spreading?

[00:06:02]So, the risk of spread is considered low uh precisely because we have put in place all the measures which will control it and therefore keeping people on the boat first would have been cruel because there are people who are probably not infected but who if they had stayed on the boat longer could have caught the virus and therefore perhaps become very ill and die from it. So we cannot expose people to this disease and then then the people who unfortunately get sick would not have been able to obtain necessarily quality care in a structure that would not have been built for it. So it made more sense to transfer them to their country, but again with very strict and well- implemented protocols. William Auro, we have some experience with what an epidemic is like on a ship. There is a case that has been recurring for several days.

[00:07:01]Another example of a cluster is the Diamond Princess cruise ship in January 2020 which was uh off the coast of Japan.

[00:07:09]Can you remind us how the Diamond Princess case was incorporated into the consideration of health risks?

[00:07:17]Yes, it's a cruise ship, so much bigger. We are talking about 3700 passengers who played a truly crucial role in understanding Covid. Uh, it takes place at the very beginning of February 2020, uh, when Uran had only been locked down for about ten days and we saw the whole world in a state of shock, we only understood that what was happening in China was serious, but we didn't understand exactly what this disease was and how it worked. And this epidemic which is breaking out in an enclosed space, in this case this famous ship, will be the subject of a scientific study almost on a real-world scale. uh, because it will allow us to monitor, especially since there will be a 3- week quarantine imposed on passengers, how the virus spreads. In this case, we will realize that something like more than one-sixth of the passengers will both contract the virus and, above all, be asymptomatic. And then there's Tony Foci, who was the head of the main health agency in the United States at the time, talking about a shock. This is the moment when we understand that we are facing a virus that can spread undetected, and that completely changes the dynamics and our understanding.

[00:08:32]Marie Jaspar, this comparison with the Diamond Success, obviously with the epidemic, the Covid-19 pandemic, is it justified in your opinion today from an epidemiological, infectionological point of view?

[00:08:44]So, it's difficult not to compare, we agree on that.

[00:08:48]It is still important to understand that these are not the same viruses, it is not the same transmission, it is not the same target population.

[00:08:55]Finally, there are a lot of things that are different and in my opinion the biggest difference is the mode of transmission. Covid had a purely respiratory transmission, meaning that someone who is in a closed room creates a cloud of microdroplets that can easily settle absolutely everywhere. Normally, based on current knowledge, obviously, we are dealing with a disease that is transmitted through the body rather than through biological fluids. So, you're going to ask me, what is quiology?

[00:09:20]So, there is saliva, there is sweat, there are tears. So, all of this is biological fluid, but there is obviously also saliva and therefore droplets of saliva. So what we know today is that we have the impression that we still need to have large droplets, large droplets that go from point A to point B and obviously not to the other end of the subway car. It doesn't become suspended in the air, it doesn't aerosolize, a priori. Uh, so it's really either very close exchanges, kisses or exchanging a spoon, a glass, things like that, or with sneezes from the... but really very, very close in fact, uh, in very close exchanges. And that changes things quite a bit because I always say, a disease that kills very easily and spreads through the air, we're in a bad way. a disease that spreads not through the air, therefore through contact, we are much more able to contain it through social distancing measures than we are starting to discuss again today. So there are things that can be compared and things that can be compared a little less, I think.

[00:10:13]So we are talking about the high lethality rate of this Antairus which reaches almost 40%, in any case exceeding the 30% threshold. Does this hinder the spread of viruses or, on the contrary, is it something that can accelerate their spread? So, normally in terms of disease spread, a virus that kills spreads less well because obviously if it kills its other host quickly, it will be able to spread.

[00:10:36]Unfortunately, in this particular case, there is an incubation period that is so long. Uh, so 45 days, 6 weeks, that's really a very long time. Uh, there's a question that remains unanswered: whether asymptomatic people transmit anything or not. Uh, and that's still our antithesis, us scientists, right? If someone who has no symptoms, as is the case with Covid, can transmit, well, people in isolation can potentially transmit before having symptoms.

[00:10:59]Those who are in isolation as soon as they are symptomatic, we isolate them even more and we really put them in the hospital so they can no longer transmit.

[00:11:06]Normally it's true that if they can transmit before that, it's more complicated. So there are many, many factors that contribute to mortality. It's especially distressing for the patients; for the caregivers, it's not easy to see these patients die. Uh, 40, 30 to 40% is huge. Finally, there are very few diseases that have such a high mortality rate. It's roughly similar to Ebol virus disease in terms of mortality rate. So that's what, as a clinician, somewhat selfishly, worries me the most. You, Orian Gibo, actually worked on Ebola. What lessons can be learned from the way public authorities are managing the Ebola virus?

[00:11:42]that there are lessons to be learned here that can be applied to the virus.

[00:11:45]So, I mostly worked on how the World Health Organization actually reacts each time there is a crisis, and in particular an epidemic crisis that attracts the attention of the international media. And one of these crises was indeed the Ebola virus disease and the epidemic that broke out in West Africa in 2014, which was an important moment for the reconfiguration of the international system in terms of fighting and preparing for epidemics, since at the time there was a real debate with very strong criticisms against the World Health Organization for its delay in perceiving that we were in an epidemic situation. It was humanitarian NGOs, notably MSF, that first alerted to the situation, and it took months in fact before we took the measure of the scale of the epidemic and put in place international cooperation and coordination. And as a result of that, there are a number of adjustments to mechanisms that have been developed within the WHO. And then after the Covid-19 crisis, there too there are a number of international mechanisms and instruments that have been reformed, the international health regulations that Sylvie Brillant was talking about earlier. And then the states also decided to negotiate a new treaty called a treaty against pandemics. uh and which was then adopted but only in part and what is the timing is interesting since the member states of the World Health Organization have just given themselves in fact an additional year to discuss the details but very important details to implement in fact this treaty.

[00:13:39]So we'll talk about this pandemic treaty again in a few moments, but Sylvie Briant, I wanted to get your reaction. This time, unlike perhaps the Ebola case and the criticism the WHO faced then, did the WHO react quickly enough? Has the WHO already been able to precisely identify the origin, the source of this virus? And then I would also like to bring up several questions in one about what Marie Gaspar told us, who said that we cannot know if the virus is present and if there is a risk of contagion for asymptomatic people. You told us that the risk was low. So, how does this apparent contradiction coexist?

[00:14:18]Uh, yes. Well, actually, I think that the good thing is that with each epidemic we learn something, that international health regulations, pandemic treaties and all that, after each large-scale epidemic we have had new agreements between countries. What you need to see is that the WHO, or rather what we call the WHO, is actually the WHO secretariat because the WHO is actually 194 Member States that discuss and so the secretariat, the role of the secretariat, is to ensure coordination and to help them to reach an agreement. Uh, so uh, our role, for example, in this epidemic, uh, was to coordinate the evacuation of passengers, to ensure that we give each country the most factual recommendations, uh, based on science, uh, on the latest scientific data that is known, uh, so that they can adapt these recommendations to the reality of their country and their health system. Our role is also to coordinate research, for example, and there are several laboratories that have had access to the virus and have therefore sequenced this virus, and this allows us, in fact, by knowing the identity card of this virus, to know if there has been, for example, a change in the identity of the virus while it was being transmitted on the ship, or if it is the same strain that was transmitted from one person to another. And that's very much about whether the virus has mutated or not. That's it. That's it. And yet currently, the initial results show that no, the virus has not mutated and it is probably the same source of contamination that affected all passengers. So, uh, this is something very important for the repost that will follow. Then, our role is also to coordinate the archer precisely to answer these very important questions.

[00:16:14]Can asymptomatic people be contagious and transmit the virus? And we will only be able to know this by setting up a study on several countries, in fact all the countries that have now recovered cases, are you sure that we have exactly the same research protocol to be able to compare the results from one country to another. Because if each country does its own little data collection and its own little protocol, then each country will have two, three, or five cases, but we will never have enough cases to really have a reliable conclusion on this major issue.

[00:16:46]There had already been an antivirus cluster in Argentina in the Tubut region. How did the authorities contain the epidemic, Sylvie Brillant, and can we also draw lessons from this, things that could be reproduced in the current context with the scattering of patients all over the world?

[00:17:06]So in fact all these epidemics are linked to emerging viruses, which are viruses in general that mainly infect animals, so they are not very well adapted to humans, and that is also why human-to-human transmission is not very efficient, let's say. So it is effective when you are on a boat and there is close proximity which means that all the people will be together all the time having close contact. But under normal living conditions, transmission is not very efficient.

[00:17:34]So what we do is what we call contact tracing, that is, we try to see who has had contact with the patients and trace the chains of transmission in order to monitor all these contacts and be sure that as soon as they have symptoms, we can isolate them. So for Ebola it's easy because in fact people are not contagious as long as they don't have symptoms. And indeed, for others, especially respiratory viruses, sometimes it's more complicated, and for Covid it was, for example.

[00:18:04]What is it, Marie?

[00:18:06]I wonder where he comes from? What defines it? What would the symptoms be if there were cause for concern?

[00:18:12]Yes, so we will indeed look for all the people who are symptomatic.

[00:18:15]So it's good to know the symptoms while we're at it. Uh, all these viruses, I work a lot on lots and lots of viruses, they actually look quite similar, actually. Clinically speaking, it's pretty much always the same thing.

[00:18:25]After an incubation period which varies, there are what are called the prodromal phases with the very aptly named viral syndrome where patients have fever, sometimes diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, headaches, something that resembles a little bit what we have all seen in the benign viral infections we have. And in fact, indeed, in this disease specifically, there is a cardiac and pulmonary involvement, cardiological and pulmonary, which is very specific with a toxicity of the vessels and not of the alveoli. So it's not the same as Covid where it is indeed the alveoli, so it is the respiratory pulmonary system that is impacted.

[00:18:56]Here, it is the vascular system that is impacted, followed by pulmonary and cardiac failure that worsens very quickly. And it's true that, well, we saw it with the patient in France, once patients pass into the cardiopulmonary phase, it's quite complicated to recover them and that's when it becomes very, very difficult, and it's because of this phase that mortality is high. I just wanted to come back to the asymptomatic cases because indeed we have always said that by "well" it is to say that we know things at a given time and then after that it changes and that is what is complicated and at the same time interesting in our profession. Indeed, we always said that Ebola was not transmitted, that we were not symptomatic, and we were all very reassured by that. I was in Guinea at that time and we said to each other that asymptomatic people do not transmit the virus. That was very reassuring. That wasn't entirely true. Unfortunately, this was realized years later, when it was discovered that there were outbreaks of epidemics that occurred with people who had never developed the disease but who had transmitted something anyway. This happened in Guinea in 2021, so 2014-26 was indeed a major epidemic in Guinea. 2021 resurgence, we do n't know why. So at the time we do n't know why, we look at the 2021 virus, look at the 2014-2 2016 virus, it's the same virus. It hasn't gone back through the animal in the meantime. So it's not a new reinfection coming from the forest and animals. And in fact, since this virus is the same, the conclusion, the hypothesis that was made at that time, was that people from 2014-2016 had kept the virus during all that time and had re-extracted the virus in 2021 and created another epidemic like a dormant virus. That's exactly it. So it's very well described, right? The HIV virus is like that. There are plenty of viruses lying dormant. That's the principle behind viruses. who hides in a corner until we can, he can come out again. So from a virological point of view, it doesn't surprise us that much.

[00:20:30]On the other hand, it's a little worrying and it's true that this dogma of asymptomatic equals transmissible took a hit on this occasion. And so that's why I'm trying to be a little careful about what we say today. I don't want to create panic everywhere, but I think we won't be able to answer the question of whether asymptomatic people are contagious or not right away. So we need to be really careful in this isolation. Patients who need to be isolated must be isolated. There's no discussion about that.

[00:20:53]William Audou, we remember at the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic, it was a time of improvisation for the different governments, each perhaps according to its political orientations or beliefs applying a different public health policy. There was this desperate appeal from Mattheo Renzi, the Italian prime minister at the time, to other European leaders asking them to learn from Italy's mistakes and to immediately implement strict measures. We can see that the lesson has been learned, whether it is Sébastien Lecnu, the French Prime Minister, or the Director of the WHO, they immediately talk about taking strict measures, confining, self-isolation. Yes. So, I think there are two or three things to say. I think the first point is that, in any case, as far as health is concerned, it falls within the scope of the States.

[00:21:44]States are sovereign. Therefore, everyone applies the protocol they deem most reasonable to apply. The WHO, I'm not saying anything stupid, it has more of an advisory role, but it can't, in any case, it can't impose.

[00:21:57]The second thing is that indeed, as after every pandemic, this was true after SARS in 2003, even if it was much less impressive, much less serious than Covid. That was eminently true after Covid. There is a natural desire to improve the international reaction. Uh, but the big but is that after Covid, the international order and this collaboration, it still took a big hit.

[00:22:25]We've been talking about the WHO's actions for a while now. Uh, there's an elephant in the room, which is that Argentina, which is currently the country where this type of virus, the Andean virus, is endemic, has left the WHO. Uh, and the world's leading power, which has long been the main funder of the WHO, which incidentally uh is hosting a major sporting event uh in a month uh has also left the WHO. So that raises a number of questions, I think.

[00:22:56]Is it uh Sylvie Brillant that Argentina has declared it is leaving the WHO? Well, it's not de facto the case yet, but in any case, it is no longer active within the WHO. Does this, for example, currently hinder research to identify the origin of the virus? Is there a collaboration with Argentina?

[00:23:14]Yes, there is a collaboration with Argentina. They even donated 2500 diagnostic kits to countries that did not have the capacity to perform the diagnosis. So, on a technical level, if you wish, the collaboration continues.

[00:23:28]I don't know for how long, but in any case, for this epidemic, it has been very active. We really hope that even if these states no longer wish to be part of the WHO for all activities, at least technical collaboration will continue because viruses do not know borders and do not care much about geopolitical tensions and so our defense against future pandemics is really solidarity and staying together to collaborate. I suggest you listen to the voice of Jay Batcharia, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States.

[00:24:07]We will interview the passengers and assess their level of risk. In this specific case, the risk is not a risk of death related to the disease. The risk is considered medium or high if they have been in close contact with a person showing symptoms. If this is not the case, the risk will be considered low.

[00:24:25]Based on that, we will offer them alternatives.

[00:24:29]The protocols applied are identical to those used during the 2018 epidemic of this same strain of Antairus.

[00:24:37]This is not about COVID-19 and we do not want to treat it as such.

[00:24:41]We do not want to cause panic among the population. We are applying the protocols relating to Antairus which, as we have already demonstrated, have allowed us to effectively contain previous epidemics. So.

[00:24:53]And these statements are in line with those of Donald Trump who declared that the United States had the best experts and the best protocol and therefore had nothing to fear. Orien Gibau, what should we fear from the United States? Is it perhaps in the somewhat uncertain nature of the American government and the figure of its prime minister, or rather its health minister, that we can fear a spread of the virus? This is one of the changes compared to what came before in global health governance, international health cooperation and what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, is that the United States, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is important to remember, Donald Trump who was in power had already announced that he was leaving the World Health Organization in the middle of the pandemic and the Biden administration during the following 4 years had finally restored participation. The United States had ultimately not actually left it.

[00:25:57]But now, since the Trump administration took power in the United States a year ago, the United States has announced that it is leaving the World Health Organization and is therefore no longer a member, which raises a number of issues, and the United States was the main funder of the organization, the main contributor to the World Health Organization's budget.

[00:26:20]So we have a different context here at the national level. The public health situation in the United States has also completely deteriorated. That is to say that not only have the United States left multilateral cooperation at the health level, but they are in the process of forging bilateral agreements with countries in order to have a foreign policy that is generally disruptive and particularly in the field of global health. He might be able to come back to it later. And then in the national context, it is a context of attack against science and in general and in particular science in the field of health with budget cuts to universities, organizations that do research, CDC, the centers for disease control in the United States which were privileged interlocutors of the WHO.

[00:27:20]Uh, at the beginning of the Trump administration, there was a ban on people working in the CDC communicating with international institutions. There have been layoffs. In short, all of this put together creates a very different and unsettling context.

[00:27:43]Williamo, we heard Je Batacharia, so indeed, who is at the head of public health policy in the United States and especially research. It's important to understand that he's not very well known in France, but he's not just anyone.

[00:27:57]someone who became known during the Covid crisis by being fiercely anti-restriction and promoting the Gington Declaration, which was an extremely reassuring libertarian policy that consisted of saying it is better for everyone to be infected and that is how we will succeed in establishing herd immunity. And it has been very openly criticized, moreover by the WHO, by a large number of specialists, and so on. So he was someone who was very much on the fringes and who was very regularly criticized for his scientific stance.

[00:28:31]Marie Jaspar, is there any form of immunity to Antairus? Well, I don't know about that. I have to tell you, there are still many things we don't know. We all need to be very humble about this disease. Uh, I really don't know.

[00:28:45]Normally, well, if we make an analogy with other diseases, normally there is an immunity that is created, but again, if we make an analogy with, in particular, well, then with Covid there is no immunity, we all saw it clearly, and we thought that there was an immunity, but ultimately we have the impression that it decreases over time and after a few years there is none left. So a few years is already good, it allows us to stop the epidemic and that's already quite something. So if that was the case with the Antairus, we would indeed be quite happy. Another question, Marie-Jaspar, is that for the moment, there is no specific treatment for Antairus. What are the possible solutions? Would it possibly be possible to produce a vaccine against Antairus?

[00:29:21]Would the data, even the nature of the virus, make it easier to research the issue?

[00:29:26]So, there are two things. There is the treatment and the vaccine. These are still things that need to be separated. So, unfortunately, when it comes to treating viruses, we have very, very few tools, right? Finally, we have to admit it. We have few tools for Covid, and very few for Ebolard either. So, I, for one, have been doing research on virus treatment for years and we are finding it very difficult to find candidates for treatment. So we have some that are circulating on all viruses, right? So we tend to use pretty much the same people each time.

[00:29:52]There are therapeutic options that are currently unavailable and not validated at all, but which have proven effective in animal models. So we are still quite far from being able to put it into a therapeutic model.

[00:30:03]The advantage on the therapeutic point is that there is still high-level resuscitation which treats people, which saves people.

[00:30:10]And we must remember this, supportive care may seem like small supportive care, but in fact, it is something very important. We compensate for the kidney, we compensate for the lung, we compensate for the heart.

[00:30:19]We are capable of doing all of that at the same time. So that saves people. The specific antiviral treatment will act at the very beginning of the disease while there is still some of the virus present. It's a bit like Covid in that when there is a virus circulating, you have to use an antiviral, but when the inflammatory system has gone into overdrive, antivirals are no longer useful. It is the inflammation that kills the patients.

[00:30:37]So we're going to stay in that same dynamic, and we know that well.

[00:30:40]Antivirals are used at the beginning, then anti-inflammatories at the end, and then above all, supportive care. So that's for the therapeutic part. We don't have a candidate far enough along in either of these two phases at the moment, but we are still very, very early. As for the vaccine, it's the same, there are vaccine candidates, some of which have been circulating for several years now.

[00:31:00]There aren't many cases in the world. So obviously, there need to be more cases for vaccine research to progress faster because it's complicated for pharmaceutical companies to invest millions and millions if there are only 11 cases, if I'm not mistaken. So there's always a bit of a balancing act at the beginning where you ask yourself, is it worth it? Not us, obviously, but the people who invest financially. Is it worth looking into the vaccination aspect? There are candidates, we'll have to see if things progress. I know there are other candidates who are also close to making progress, but then, will it go as fast as Covid? I can't say that.

[00:31:32]Ryan Guibo was referring earlier to the negotiations surrounding the pandemic treaty, Sylvie Brillant. Regarding the framework of the vaccine and the sharing of the vaccine, we remember during Covid, there was a kind of global vaccine competition, with states giving vaccines to other states based on geopolitical alignment. Since Covid, the geopolitical situation has worsened, uh, multilateral relations are at their lowest point. What role could the WHO and this pandemic treater play in sharing scientific knowledge and vaccines, possibly including a vaccine against Antairus?

[00:32:10]Well, that's actually the purpose of this annex to the treaty that the member states are trying to negotiate: to ensure that when countries share viruses and scientific knowledge, if they have shared their virus, they can also have access to the vaccine, which was not the case during Covid or even during the 2009 flu pandemic because many countries, especially developing countries, share their viruses.

[00:32:39]But then when the vaccine produced from these viruses becomes available, they don't actually have access to it because it's too expensive or because they do n't request sufficient quantities.

[00:32:48]And so the goal of this treatment is precisely to create a much fairer global system and to ensure that if countries need vaccines or treatments or diagnostics to control the epidemic on their soil, they can get them quickly so as to also stop transmission.

[00:33:07]Is Orian Gibau, if you'll pardon me, the sticking point? Is this the point of conflict that still prevents the application of this treaty today?

[00:33:18]Well, that's the part of the TRT that still needs to be negotiated, the part that needs to be agreed upon so that the States can then sign, ratify and the treaty can enter into force.

[00:33:29]So yes, it's a big one and it's a big issue because it's about the question of fairness and inequality. So, between countries at the heart of it, and to put it generally, we have an opposition between countries of the south and those with fewer resources and countries of the north where the pharmaceutical industry is largely located, and who are opposed on this issue because their interests are not aligned.

[00:34:02]And we see here the importance of having permanent and institutionalized channels of discussion to keep these discussions going and also to try to have a global approach to preparing for epidemics and pandemics. It was n't the only point of the treaty on combating pandemics; having such a treaty on combating pandemics was also about remembering that preparation takes place upstream.

[00:34:31]Being prepared to respond to an epidemic or a pandemic means having health systems that function, that are resilient, that are funded. This also means, as we have discussed a little bit in the context of the International Health Regulations, having alert systems and then response systems, but there is a whole system to understand in its entirety, and also to take into account, which is one of the other points of the pandemic treaty, an approach that takes into account environmental and animal health and human health, what we call a One Health approach, so that was all these issues and on these points to take all these issues in their entirety. In fact, there are simply conflicting interests between states and international organizations that are there to institutionalize international cooperation. Well, normally that's what they're for, to bring people together and therefore lead to compromises on these issues.

[00:35:33]Marie Jaspar was just talking to us about the economic interests or the lack of commercial interest that the idea of ​​seeking a vaccine for 11 patients could have. Is n't this the place, the location for public research? Orient Gibau? Yes. Well, as Sylvie Brillant said earlier, the WHO plays a coordinating role and also encourages research. After what we saw, for example, in the case following the Ebola virus disease, there was a coalition for epidemic preparedness that was put in place precisely to encourage the creation of networks, to find funding from the State but also from philanthropic foundations, in short from various funders, in order to mobilize research on subjects that are not profitable at the time of the research but which may be useful and perhaps even profitable later.

[00:36:26]Another point I would like us to address before the end of this program with you William Odurau and also you Marie Jaspar, is the issue of information and disinformation. Covid was the very example of the explosion of online disinformation, the inability to distrust public authorities, the narrative of the explosion, and the multiplication of parallel or even conspiratorial narratives. In recent weeks, in recent days, William Moduro, I remind you that you are a journalist at Le Monde, a specialist in fact-checking and disinformation, have you observed the same disinformation mechanisms on social networks, for example? So yes, and what is striking is that we find the same rumors almost identically. Well, stories that already seemed caricatured and off-base 6 years ago are coming back exactly the same. Uh, it's a pandemic that was allegedly planned by Bill Gates. Uh, it's a Big Pharma conspiracy to sell vaccines, or for the more, uh, paranoid people. a virus that would necessarily have been created in a P4 laboratory by humans since there is a systematic denial of viral emergence in nature for a necessarily malicious purpose which is to eradicate elderly populations or reduce the world population. There are even rumors about miracle treatments and about Macdin winter already returning. Uh, it was the antibiotic recommended by Donald, uh, Donald Trump, sorry, the slip of the tongue, uh, DJ Raou at the time, at the same time, so Marie Jaspar, no, uh, miracle antibiotic, how to do, uh, and really in 20-30 seconds to get well informed or go and find information outside of France Culture, obviously, well, I was going to say to France Culture, obviously, no, I think we have to, we have to try to keep the traditional media because indeed there are still some things that are verified, the traditional media normally pay attention to what they say, the French world, France Culture, France Inter, or even France Info, I mean, I think we have to try to stay in the mainstream media. I had a presentation not long ago from a colleague who told us that, in general, people who followed mainstream media, excuse me for saying this, I don't take it badly, you understand, including France Culture, were less misinformed than people who sought out somewhat alternative media. So I think we need to try to stay attentive, and also that scientists speak easy French.

[00:38:48]So stay tuned, stay informed. Thank you CAD for accepting this invitation. Orian Gibo, I remind you that you are a lecturer in political science at Paris 8. William Odura, journalist at Le Monde. I would like to remind you of the title of your book, "World History of Covid," published last March by àar publishers. Sylvie Brillant, Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. Thank you very much for contacting us. and Marie Jaspar who impromptuly jumped into a taxi. Infectious disease specialist, lecturer in the infectious and tropical diseases department of Saint-Antoine Hospital. Thanks also to the team of question du soir first part Dianne Devanc and Louise Morfois, Mathias Mégi Antoine, Joseph Schleugel and as for us, we will be back in a few seconds now to talk about the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War without transition. Mr.