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PARIS (Reuters) – A French hospital that re-analyzed old samples from pneumonia patients found that it had treated a man who had COVID-19 on December 27, almost a month before the French government confirmed his first cases.
A nurse, wearing protective gear and face mask, walks past an informational sign in the post-COVID-19 unit of the private Clinique Breteche hospital in Nantes during the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in France on 30 April 2020. REUTERS / Stephane Mahe / Archives
Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that the scientists had re-analyzed samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who tested negative for the flu.
“Of the 24, we had a positive one for COVID-19 on December 27,” he told the news channel Sunday.
All samples had been initially collected to detect influenza using PCR tests, the same genetic screening process that can also be used to detect the presence of the new coronavirus in infected patients at the time of sample collection.
Each sample was retested multiple times to ensure there were no errors, he added. Neither Cohen nor his team were immediately available for comment Monday.
France, which has seen nearly 25,000 people die from the virus since March 1, confirmed its first three cases of COVID-19 on January 24, including two patients in Paris and one in the city of Bordeaux in southwestern France. United States.
Cohen said it was too early to know whether the patient whose COVID-19 test was positive on December 27 is France’s “patient zero.” Knowing who was the first is essential to understanding how the virus spread.
Cohen said the patient had survived and that a first investigation was conducted to trace the first contamination.
“He was sick for 15 days and infected his two children, but not his wife, who works in a supermarket.
“He was amazed, he did not understand how he had been infected. We put together the puzzle and he had not made any trips. The only contact he had was with his wife.
The man’s wife worked alongside a sushi stall, close to Chinese colleagues, Cohen said. It was unclear if those colleagues had traveled to China, and the local health authority should investigate, he said.
“We wondered if she was asymptomatic,” he said.
“It may be ‘patient zero,’ but there may be others in other regions. All negative PCRs for pneumonia need to be retested. The virus was probably circulating (then),” he said.
