Coronavirus: France discovers undiagnosed COVID-19 patient from December
Live MintA patient hospitalized with flu-like symptoms at the end of December in France turned out to have had Covid-19, a finding that suggests the new coronavirus was spreading there at least a month earlier than official records show. The finding contradicts official statistics, which show the first Covid-19 cases in France occurred in people who returned from Wuhan, China, at the end of January. “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,” Yves Cohen, the head of intensive care at two large hospitals northeast of Paris, and colleagues wrote in the report. “Moreover, the absence of a link with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December.” The researchers said official numbers, which peg Covid-19 cases at 203,253 in France, probably underestimate the disease’s impact, and that their findings could “change our understanding of the dynamic of the epidemic.” A spokesman for the World Health Organization said other countries may make similar discoveries by running new tests on samples from patients who were sick in December and January.