Coronavirus (COVID-19) Collection
Emergence and outcomes of the SARS-CoV-2 ‘Marseille-4’ variant
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic that started in Wuhan, China in December 2019 has spread rapidly around the world ( https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html ). At the Méditerranée Infection Institute (IHU) in Marseille, routine diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 by PCR was set up in January 2020 (Lagier et al., 2020; Colson et al., 2020a). The first SARS-CoV-2-infected patient was diagnosed at the IHU on February 27, 2020 (Colson et al., 2020c) ( https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/covid-19/ ).Temporal and age distributions of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses, southeastern France
The SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, which apparently started in December 2019 in China (Wu and McGoogan, 2020), currently presents a poorly understood epidemiological cycle. In China, Korea, and now in Europe, it seems to have had a bell-shaped distribution ( https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases ; https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/covid-19/ ) as is typical for viral respiratory infections. Furthermore, we and others have shown that detection of SARS-CoV-2 in children is rare, as are clinical cases (Colson et al., 2020; Gudbjartsson et al., 2020; Jones et al., 2020; Li et al., 2020; Wu and McGoogan, 2020).Comparison of mortality associated with respiratory viral infections between December 2019 and March 2020 with that of the previous year in Southeastern France
Respiratory viruses are a major cause of mortality worldwide, with an estimated 2.7 million deaths in 2015 (GBD 2015 LRI Collaborators, 2017). In France, they cause several thousands of deaths every year during the colder months (Pivette et al., 2020). Since January 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has generated much fear and countermeasures to stem the spread of this respiratory virus. This has largely been fueled by the tremendously extensive reporting of Covid-19-associated deaths. As of 31 March 2020, 770,520 people have been found infected worldwide, of whom 36,942 (4.8%) died.
