[New coronavirus infection: new challenges, new legacies]

A new highly pathogenic human coronavirus has emerged. Its natural history and its determinants are still under investigation. It lacks a publication to examine all the cases identified worldwide. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to describe the cases and deaths caused by the new coronavirus.

World Health Organization's, European Centre for Disease Control's and Eurosurveillance's publications online were reviewed. We performed a descriptive analysis of the cases; the limits of proportions were calculated with a 0.05 alpha using Wilson test, and Student's t test for mean difference.

There are 17 confirmed cases and 11 deaths in several countries in Asia and Europe; men predominated. The case fatality rate was 64.70 %. People who died took five days to hospitalize after the first symptoms. There is a lack of publications to describe the natural history of the disease, but the descriptions of the European publications are consistent with the results of this study.

It is necessary to keep the surveillance and further studies in order to assess the impact on international public health.