SARS-CoV-2 was already spreading in France in late December 2019
Highlights
• SARS-CoV-2 was already spreading in France in late December 2019, 1 month before the first official cases in the country.
• Early community spreading changes our knowledge of the COVID-19 epidemic.
• This new case changes our understanding of the epidemic, and modelling studies should adjust to these new data.
Abstract
The COVID-19 epidemic is believed to have started in late January 2020 in France. Here we report a case of a patient hospitalised in December 2019 in an intensive care unit in a hospital in the north of Paris for haemoptysis with no aetiological diagnosis. RT-PCR was performed retrospectively on the stored respiratory sample and confirmed the diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Based on this result, it appears that the COVID-19 epidemic started much earlier in France.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920301643
https://palexander.substack.com/p/sars-cov-2-was-already-spreading