translation via Kiwi Browser
Did a patient admitted to resuscitation at the end of December at the Jean-Verdier hospital in Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis) have Covid-19, when the first official cases date from the end of January? This is what Professor Yves Cohen, head of the resuscitation department of Jean-Verdier hospitals in Bondy and Avicenna in Bobigny, said on Sunday.
“Based on the idea of Jean-Ralph Zahar, who is our professor of hygiene, we took back all the PCRs that had been tested in patients who had pneumonia in December and January for which the diagnosis was negative. Of the 24 patients, we had one who was positive at Covid-19 on December 27, when he was hospitalized with us in Jean-Verdier,”Explained Yves Cohen on BFMTV.
PCR, it should be remembered, is a molecular biology technique of genetic amplification, which allows to search a biological sample for the presence of a sequence of DNA or RNA. In hospital, it is used to diagnose various viral infections. The patient referred to by Prof. Cohen had been tested for influenza.
The man, the doctor said, was called back by the team. “He was sick for 15 days and he infected his two children, but not his wife, who works in a supermarket, at the fish stall. We wondered if there was anything to do with fish of Chinese origin, but it only works on French products.” The patient had not travelled and “did not understand how he had been infected”.Possible explanation sketched by Professor Cohen: alongside his wife would work “people of Chinese origin”. “One wonders if it was not reached in this way in an asymptomatic way.” The patient and his family are now in good health.
The new test was performed twice, and was positive both times. “This patient had Covid-19 on December 27, 2019,”the doctor said. So far, the disease has not officially appeared in France until January 2020. On Friday, January 24, then-Health Minister Agnès Buzyn confirmed that three cases had been diagnosed in Bordeaux and Paris. Two of them had travelled to Wuhan, the cradle of the epidemic, before they came to Paris, and the third was a close relative of one of them.
The regional health agency of Ile-de-France “has been notified,”said Yves Cohen, and a scientific publication is planned “next week in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents”. The doctor called on other virologists to retest “negative PCRs from the same period”.
www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/un-patient-atteint-du-coronavirus-fin-decembre-a-bondy-20200503
h/t Kujo17