French doctors find COVID-19 case from December

Doctors at Paris found that the Covid-19 virus could have arrived in France a month earlier than previously thought, after a re-test by a 42-year-old man hospitalized on December 27, 2019, for pneumonia, came back positive.

Iran Press/Europe: “Covid-19 was already spreading in France in late December 2019, a month before the official first cases in the country,” the team at Groupe Hospitalier Paris Seine in Saint-Denis wrote in a study published on May 3 in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.

Dr. Yves Cohen, an intensive care doctor at the hospital said that along with other doctors they decided to retroactively test samples from patients with flu-like illness for the period of December 2 to January 16, to check whether the virus had been spreading undetected.

“In April, we defrosted the samples we had stored, and we tested them again, but this time for traces of COVID-19,” Cohen told BBC.

If the case is confirmed, it changes the timeline for the circulation of the virus, as China reported its first Covid-19 cases to the World Health Organisation on December 31, while France, on January 24.

“Identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge regarding SARS-COV-2 and its spreading in the country.

Moreover, the absence of a link with China and the lack of recent travel suggests that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019,” the scientists' team wrote in their study.

The number of people who died from Covid-19 in France increased by 330 to 25,531 on Tuesday, the sharpest rate of increase in six days, government data showed. 

France's health ministry said the number of people in intensive care units fell to 3,430 from 3,696 on Monday, down for a 27th consecutive day.

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