Short Communication
SARS-CoV-2 was already spreading in France in late December 2019

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106006 Get rights and content

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.

Keywords

COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019
SARS-CoV-2
Intensive care unit
France

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