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French authorities announced on Saturday that the funeral of a 51-year-old Portuguese in Dordogne has already resulted in nine positive cases of covid-19 in the region and 127 people have been tested.
The Regional Health Agency of Nova Aquitânia, the region where Dordogne is located, announced this afternoon at a press conference that the focus of covid-19 generated by the funeral of a 51-year-old Portuguese has led to nine positive cases so far .
Of these cases, eight people are family members and another belonged to the company where the deceased Portuguese would work. None of these infected people have severe symptoms of the disease, said Michel Laforcade, director of the New Aquitaine Regional Health Agency.
As already announced on Friday, the reason for this new approach will have been an overcrowding at the funeral celebrations.
Although the celebration of the funeral in the Church respected the limit of 20 people, as indicated by the radio “France Bleu”, both in the morgue and at a family gathering, the number of people who joined was much greater than that.
João Carlos Sousa, president of the Portuguese association Lusitanos 24, based in Marsac sur L’Isle, Dordogne, reported the situation to the Lusa agency on Friday.
“It is not understood that the person who organized the funeral allowed so many people to enter, because the limit for a funeral is 20 people. And, it is said, it was much more than that, ”said João Carlos Sousa.
The mayor of the region, Frédéric Périssat, alerted the microphones of “France Bleu” that “this is an illustration of what is not intended to happen with the purpose of the closure.”
“This is what we do not want to happen in the next three weeks [após o fim do confinamento em França], an oversight in family gatherings or in meetings between neighbors where a single person will contaminate a significant number of people, “said the mayor.
So far, according to the Nova Aquitaine Regional Health Agency, 127 people who have been to the funeral or have been in contact with people who have been there have been examined and the nine cases have been identified in the results of 103 tests. The result of the remaining tests should be known by the end of today.
The funeral took place at the end of April in the town of Église-Neuve-de-Vergt, in the Dordogne, and will have received people not only from the region, but also relatives from Switzerland and Portugal.
The first case was detected on May 1, and since then, the region’s health authorities have carried out an investigation to identify all possible carriers of the virus related to this funeral.
Since the start of the pandemic, Dordogne has registered a total of 237 confirmed cases of covid-19, there are currently 27 people hospitalized and one of them is in serious condition.
