A patient diagnosed with pneumonia near Paris on 27 December actually had the coronavirus, his doctor has said.
This means the virus may have arrived in Europe almost a month earlier than previously thought.
Dr. Yves Cohen said a swab taken at the time was recently tested and came back positive for Covid-19.
The patient, who has since fully recovered, said he had no idea where he caught the virus as he had not been to any infected areas.
Knowing who was the first case is key to understanding how the virus spread.
What do we know about the new case? Dr Cohen, head of emergency medicine at Avicenne and Jean-Verdier hospitals near Paris, said the patient was a 43-year-old man from Bobigny, north-east of Paris.
He told the BBC’s Newsday program that the patient must have been infected between 14 and 22 December, as coronavirus symptoms take between five and 14 days to appear.
He was admitted to hospital on 27 December exhibiting what later became to be known as the main coronavirus symptoms, including a dry cough, a fever and trouble breathing.
This was four days before the World Health Organization’s China country office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause being detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
The patient, Amirouche Hammar,told French broadcaster BFMTV that he had not travelled before falling sick.
Dr Cohen said two of the patient’s children had also fallen ill but that his wife had not shown any symptoms. But Dr Cohen pointed out that the patient’s wife worked at a supermarket near Charles de Gaulle airport and could have come into contact with people who had recently arrived from China.
The patient’s wife said that “often customers would come directly from the airport, still carrying their suitcases”.
“We’re wondering whether she was asymptomatic,” Dr Cohen said. He called for the potential link to be investigated further.
What does it tell us?
Could coronavirus have been circulating in Europe in late 2019, many weeks before it was officially recognised and declared a threat there? That is the suggestion being made after a French doctor has revealed that he treated a patient in Paris with all of the symptoms of coronavirus just after Christmas.
How does this change what we know about the pandemic? It might be that the test result is an error and so does not change a thing.
But it if is correct, it could mean spread of the disease was going unchecked in Europe while all eyes were on the East in Wuhan.
Certainly, any laboratories in Europe with samples from patients sick with similar symptoms around that time might want to run a test for coronavirus to see what it reveals so that we can learn more about this new disease.
Why does it matter?
Until now, what were thought to have been the country’s first three cases of coronavirus were confirmed on 24 January.
Of those, two had been to Wuhan – where the outbreak was first detected – and the third was a close family member.
This positive test result suggests the virus was present in France much earlier and will change the understanding of how it spread.
“This case will allow us to better understand the evolution of the virus on French soil,” Dr Cohen told the BBC.
Rowland Kao, a professor of veterinary epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, said that if confirmed, this case highlighted the speed at which an infection starting in a seemingly remote part of the world could quickly seed infections elsewhere.
“It means that the lead time we have for assessment and decision-making can be very short, emphasising the need for preparedness, planning and rapid global communication of disease threats,” Prof Kao said.
Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, urged further research: “Sequencing any virus in the sample might give you insight into whether or not the virus truly was an early isolate or likely contamination.”
Prof Ball said that sequencing the virus could be prove difficult, however, as it looked from the data that the amount of virus in the sample was low.
The first human-to-human transmission within Europe had until now thought to have been a German man who was infected by a Chinese colleague who visited Germany between 19 and 22 January.
The United States also recently had to revise its coronavirus timeline. A post-mortem examination carried out in California revealed that the first coronavirus-related death in the country was almost a month earlier than previously thought.
Source:Â bbc.com