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The first French case of Covid-19 may have clues about the start of the pandemic
(Reuters) A study by French scientists suggesting that a man was infected with Covid-19 as early as December 27.Almost a month before France confirmed its first cases, it could be important to assess when and where the new coronavirus emerged, experts said Tuesday.
French researchers led by Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals, They retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who had tested negative for the flu before Covid-19 became a pandemic..
The results, published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, showed that one patient: A 42-year-old man born in Algeria, who had lived in France for many years and worked as a fishmonger. He was infected with Covid-19 “a month before the first cases reported in our country,” they said.
The World Health Organization said the results “were not surprising.”
“It is also possible that more early cases will be found, “WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said at a UN briefing in Geneva.. He encouraged other countries to check case records in late 2019, saying this would give the world a “new and clearer picture” of the outbreak.
Independent experts said the findings needed further investigation.
“It is not impossible that it was an early introduction, but the evidence is by no means conclusive.“said Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham in Britain.
Stephen Griffin, an expert at the University of Leeds Medical Research Institute, said it was “a potentially important finding” and added: “We must be cautious in interpreting these findings.”
Cohen told French television on Monday that it was too early to know whether the patient, whose last trip to Algeria had been in August 2019, was “France patient zero”.“
But “identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it dramatically changes our knowledge of SARS-COV-2 (the new coronavirus) and its spread in the country,” he and his co-researchers wrote in the document detailing their findings. .
They said the absence of a link with China and the lack of recent travel “suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population in late December 2019“
