Well, we knew they kept it dark for a good while.
But maybe it was longer than we thought.
WHO urges countries to investigate possible early Covid-19 cases after French study
The World Health Organization has said a study by French scientists which suggests a man was infected with Covid-19 as early as 27 December was “not surprising”, and urged countries to investigate any other early suspicious cases.
Covid-19, as it was later named, was first reported by Chinese authorities to the WHO on 31 December and was not previously believed to have spread to Europe until January.
“This gives a whole new picture on everything,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a UN briefing in Geneva.
“The findings help to better understand the potential virus circulation of Covid-19,” he added, saying other possible earlier cases could emerge after retesting samples.
French researchers led by Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals, retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who had tested negative for flu before Covid-19 developed into a pandemic.
The results, published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, showed that one patient - a 42-year-old man born in Algeria, who had lived in France for many years and worked as a fishmonger - was infected with Covid-19 “one month before the first reported cases in our country”, they said.
Cohen told French television on Monday it was too early to know if the patient, whose last trip to Algeria had been in August 2019, was France’s “patient zero”.
The researchers said 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 2019”.
France, where almost 25,000 people have died from Covid-19 since 1 March, confirmed its first three cases on 24 January.
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