A sensational statement from French doctors about a Covid-19 patient: we may have very little time

If a positive test is confirmed in an “early” French patient, it will mean that the coronavirus could have appeared in Europe a month earlier than announced by the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to the BBC, a case of infection in France in December was detected by repeated testing of an old patient sample. The patient’s doctor, Yves Cohen, reported that the new test was positive.

Information about the first cases of infection with the virus is very important to understand the course of the epidemic.

According to the World Health Organization, there may have been more undetected cases of COVID-19. WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier asked national health services to reexamine the hospital’s files to better understand how the virus is spreading.

As the French Health Ministry told the BBC, the government is still investigating the early case reported by Mr Cohen, but will carry out an investigation if necessary.

Where else

France is not the only country where the first cases of infection occur. An autopsy of a patient in California two weeks ago showed that the first death in the US USA Related to the coronavirus, it was registered almost a month earlier than expected.

Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, also released a report on the first cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday. According to him, the first cases of Covid-19 detected by Europeans in China should not surprise experts.

However, the patient mentioned at the beginning of the article, who was treated by Y. Cohen, says that he does not understand where he could have been infected. He didn’t go anywhere before he got sick.

What is known about the “early” case in France?

Dr. Yves Cohen heads the resuscitation departments of a group of hospitals at the Avicenne Jean-Verdier clinic near Paris. According to him, the “early” patient was a 43-year-old man from the city of Bobinji, northeast of Paris.

According to the BBC’s Newsday program, Cohen said the patient became infected around December 14-22; Coronavirus symptoms may appear within 5 to 14 days after infection.

Patient Amirouche Hammar was hospitalized on December 27, with a dry cough, fever, and shortness of breath. These symptoms were later identified as the main signs of coronavirus.

This happened four days before the WHO Regional Office for China reported on patients with pneumonia of unknown origin in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

In an interview with French television BFMTV, Hammar said he had never left France before being hospitalized. According to Cohen, Hammar’s children were also infected and the wife had no symptoms.

However, the doctor noted that Hammar’s wife worked in a supermarket near Charles de Gaulle airport and was able to contact people from China there.

“We think he may have had no symptoms,” says Dr. Cohen.

What does this mean?

Is it possible that the coronavirus traveled Europe in late 2019, a few weeks before the date its threat was recognized here? This version came after a French doctor told me about a patient with coronavirus symptoms who contacted him immediately after Christmas.

How does this change our understanding of the current pandemic? Possible, repeating the tests will be negative and it will turn out that a positive test was an error. If so, nothing changes. But if the positive result was correct, it could mean that the virus did not spread unhindered in Europe until everyone was observing the situation in Wuhan.

European laboratories with studies in patients with similar symptoms will likely have to retest the coronavirus for more information on the disease.

Why is this important?

To date, experts have estimated that the three cases of coronavirus registered in France on January 24 were the first in the country. Two of the sick had just arrived from Wuhan, and the third was a member of his family.

As previously thought, the first person-to-person transmission of the virus in Europe was in Germany. The German became infected with a colleague who flew from Wuhan on January 19 and 22.

According to Rowland Kao, professor of veterinary epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, identifying an “early” patient highlights how quickly a virus originating in a relatively remote region can spread around the world.

“This means that we may have very little time to assess the situation and make decisions,” Kao said.

As Dr. Yves Cohen told the BBC service, the decision was made by himself during a new examination of patients with signs of pneumonia who were hospitalized between December 2 and January 16.

Cohen studied fourteen patients with evidence of negative pneumonia. Their studies were cooled and tested for Covid-19.

Of the fourteen samples, only one positive coronavirus result was detected. The new test was also positive. The patient’s MRI also resembled the image of patients with Covid-19.

Cohen added that a more detailed report on the “early” patient will be published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.

When was the first case in China?

The South China Morning Post also wrote about the fact that the first case in China was tracked earlier than officially announced.

The first case of the disease, now well known to everyone under the name COVID-19, was diagnosed in China on November 17, according to government data accessed by the publication.

Chinese authorities say they have so far been able to identify 266 people infected with the new coronavirus last year. They were all, in a sense, in the medical center. Some cases were identified retrospectively by examining samples from suspected patients.

Interviews with knowledgeable sources in the medical community suggest that Chinese doctors realized they were dealing with the new virus only in late December.

Since the virus outbreak in Wuhan, China in January that turned into a global health crisis two months later, researchers have been working to model the spread of COVID-19 in the first place.

According to experts, understanding how the virus has spread and how unidentified and undocumented cases have contributed to the infection’s development would help to better understand the scale of the current threat.

According to government data available to journalists, a 55-year-old resident of Hubei province may have been the first to become infected with the coronavirus on November 19.

Since then, at least five new cases have been recorded every day. On December 15, the number of infected reached 27, and the first double-digit increase was recorded on December 17. The number of confirmed cases reached 60 on December 20.

On December 27, Zhang Jixian, a doctor at Hubei Provincial Hospital, informed Chinese officials that the disease was caused by a new coronavirus. There were already 180 sick people that day, although the doctors were not aware of all the cases at the time. On the last day of 2019, the number of confirmed cases increased to 266, the first day of 2020, to 381.

Although government reports are not made public, they do provide valuable clues as to how the virus spread in the early days and what the rate of spread was.

Investigators are now trying to identify the first person to receive COVID-19. This would help them trace the original source of the new coronavirus. The virus is believed to have been transmitted to humans by a wild animal.

Of the first nine cases identified in November, four men and five women, none is the first patient. They are all 39-79, but it is not known if they are all Wuhan residents. There may have been cases of illness that started earlier than reported by state data.

According to the World Health Organization website, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in China was recorded on December 8, but the organization itself does not monitor or follow the disease and is based on information provided by states. .

According to a publication in the medical journal The Lancet, prepared by doctors at Wuhan City Hospitals, where the first patients were treated with COVID-19, the date of the first infection is December 1.

Ai Fen People, the first doctor to publish the information, said in an interview, which was later censored, that the investigation revealed that a new coronavirus had been detected on December 16 in a patient from Wuhan Central Hospital.

Reports from other doctors suggest that the Wuhan medical community learned of the disease in late December.

It was previously reported that although city doctors took samples from infected suspects in late December, they were unable to confirm the results, as bureaucratic obstacles such as the need to obtain consent from the Chinese Center for Control and Prevention of Illnesses would have delayed the process for at least a few days. In addition, they were also instructed not to disclose information to the public.

As early as January 11, Wuhan health officials claimed that there were only 41 confirmed cases.