Coronavirus appears to have infected people in France weeks before the disease was detected in Europe and possibly before the first cases of pneumonia of unknown origin were announced in China in December, according to scientists and doctors who have analysed virus samples.
Retesting of samples from patients with influenza-like symptoms at a hospital north of Paris found one that tested positive for coronavirus from the end of last year, a finding described in a paper for the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents published this week.
“We had a positive Covid-19 case on December 27 who was hospitalised with us at Jean-Verdier [hospital],” Yves Cohen, head of intensive care for two hospitals in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, told France’s BFMTV. He was one of the contributors to the paper.
“It’s not surprising when you consider that the World Health Organization has announced that it was circulating in China from December 8 at least. Given the amount of travel, it’s normal that the virus appeared quickly in France.”
France reported the first Covid-19 death in western Europe on February 15, when a Chinese tourist from Hubei died in a Paris hospital after arriving in the country on January 25.
Meanwhile, Sweden potentially had its first case of coronavirus in November, according to the country’s chief epidemiologist. Travellers from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease is thought to have originated, were probably visiting the country in November or December, Anders Tegnell, told local media. “It doesn’t sound at all strange,” he said.
Sweden’s first official case, a 20-year-old woman returning from a trip to Wuhan, came in January.
The French Covid-19 patient, whose infection was confirmed with two separate types of genetic test, was a 42-year-old man born in Algeria who had not travelled abroad since July 2019 but one of whose children had earlier reported influenza-like symptoms. The father recovered.
“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,” the paper said. “Moreover, the absence of a link [from the patient] with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019.”
More than 25,000 people have died from Covid-19 in French hospitals and old people’s homes since March 1, although the spread of the virus has slowed sharply since the imposition of a lockdown from March 17. Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris have been among the worst-hit areas.
A separate paper by scientists from France’s Institut Pasteur also concluded that the coronavirus appeared to be circulating in the country in February before the appearance of a series of well-publicised outbreaks that were subsequently controlled by testing and quarantine measures.
The authors said their genomic data “implies local circulation of the virus in undocumented infections prior to the wave of Covid-19 cases”.
Their analyses of different Covid-19 clades, or variants, led them to infer “that the virus was silently circulating in France in February, a scenario compatible with the large proportion of mild or asymptomatic diseases . . . and observations in other European countries”.
Additional reporting by Richard Milne in Oslo
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2020-05-05 21:49:23Z
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