Retesting old samples has pushed the timeline for the outbreak in Europe back by a month, and made clear how far the virus outpaced the world’s attempts to contain it.
Doctors in France reported that a patient in late December may have had the coronavirus, a finding that could significantly advance the timeline of the global spread of the virus and raise fresh questions about how long the disease was circulating in Wuhan before it was acknowledged by Chinese authorities.
The discovery came after French doctors retested samples taken on Dec. 27 from a patient initially diagnosed with pneumonia. That was days before Chinese authorities first reported the previously unknown ailment to the World Health Organization; weeks before the Chinese acknowledged that human to human transmission was even possible; and more than a month before the disease was first officially acknowledged to have emerged in France.
Dr. Yves Cohen, head of intensive care, told the BFM TV news channel that they detected one case of Covid-19 from a Dec. 27 sample, adding that staff had tested it several times to rule out a false positive.
France’s health ministry said on Tuesday that authorities were “in contact with scientists and experts on the issue in order to obtain a confirmation or a refutation from them on this topic.”
“We are in permanent contact with our European and Chinese counterparts on the issue, in order to better understand the spread of the virus at the global level,” the ministry said.
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