Covid-19: since when has the virus been circulating in France?

It is an invisible evil that has likely gone under the radar of health diagnoses for months. The Covid-19, which has made more than 25,000 deaths in France in recent weeks, still retains its share of mystery as to the origin of its spread in France.

Until last week, the department of Oise was considered the starting point for the spread of the virus with a "zero patient" identified "the second week" of January, as Le Monde revealed on April 8 . The Directorate General of Health (DGS), contacted by France 24, for its part dates the first official cases of contamination to "end of January 2020".

This was before Professor Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation services at Avicenne hospitals in Bobigny and Jean Verdier de Bondy, announced on May 3 on BFM Paris that a patient from Seine-Saint-Denis had been tested positive for Covid-19 on December 27, 2019. During his hospitalization, he had undergone a PCR test - for pneumonia - which had proved negative.

"We took back the negative tests of all the patients who had pneumonia from December 2, 2019, and the first one that we found positive for Covid-19 was on December 27", explains Pr Yves Cohen, joint by telephone by France 24. "The sample had been taken on December 27, but we only knew it was positive in early April".

The patient concerned, a resident of Bobigny, did not know that he was infected then. "I went out shopping at the mall, at the market, I took the kids to school, welcomed the family home, so yes, maybe I contaminated others," said he explained to France Bleu Paris.

Government awaits "confirmation" of Covid-19 case identified in December

But the man who is "the oldest patient so far" tested positive for Covid-19 in France, according to Professor Yves Cohen, might not be the first link in the contamination chain. "The only thing we know is that his wife was very slightly sick before him, that he was afterwards and that he passed this on to his children," said the head of services at intensive care.

And the wife of the new "patient zero", if she too was infected, could have been contaminated at her place of work, in a supermarket. For Pr Yves Cohen, two hypotheses are then possible: "Either she was able to be in contact with people of Asian origin at the stand of her fishmonger, or with people from the airport, her workplace not being not very far from Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle. "

"This study (by Pr Yves Cohen) suggests that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating on our territory before the first official cases, even before confirmation of its existence by the scientific community", explains the DGS, which adds: "The government is in contact with scientists and experts to obtain their confirmation or information on this subject. We are in permanent contact with our European and Chinese counterparts on the subject, in order to better understand the spread of the coronavirus at the level worldwide. "

"First cases" of infection in Colmar in November?

However, the identity of the first patient infected with Covid-19 is not fixed. "There are several hospitals - that of Garches, La Pitié-Salpêtrière and others in the East of France - which are in the process of redoing what we have done as a study," says Professor Yves Cohen.

One of them, the Albert Schweitzer hospital in Colmar, also stated in a press release, Thursday, May 7, the first cases (of Covid-19) noted on November 17, 2019 in eastern France. Doctor Schmitt, after retrospectively studying more than 2,000 chest scanners carried out between November 1 and April 30, detected "a few cases already in circulation in the region at the beginning of November". "The virus then dispersed very sporadically. The contagion accelerated at the time of the end-of-year events", until the explosion of the epidemic, at the end of February, after an evangelical gathering in Mulhouse .

The Colmar hospital also announced the launch of a collaboration with the CNRS to "start an epidemiological exploitation of these results".

On the DGS side, it is explained that "there is no single zero patient in France". "We had cases of contamination at the end of January. We had a cluster of cases in the Oise. We had a cluster in the Haut-Rhin," adds the Directorate General of the Ministry of Solidarity and Health.

The hypothesis of the World Military Games in Wuhan in October

Another hypothesis of the possible diffusion of Covid-19 in France leads to the side of the French army, more precisely to the World Military Summer Games (WMD). This international competition took place from October 18 to 27, 2019 in China, in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Several athletes who participated in the JMME report having suffered from symptoms similar to those of Covid-19. Among them, a Luxembourg swimmer said that two of his teammates fell ill during the WYD. And a French soldier claimed to have contracted symptoms that may resemble Covid-19.

It is ultimately the testimony of the modern pentathlon world champion who shone the spotlight on this competition in Wuhan. In an interview - now inaccessible online - given to local television TL7 at the end of March, and gone unnoticed until this week, Élodie Clouvel said that she thought she had been infected with her companion Valentin Belaud, pentathlete too. Both participated in the JMME within the French delegation.

Asked about this competition as a possible starting point for the virus in France, the DGS refers to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, which reacted on Wednesday in a press release: "There have been no (...) cases declared to of the Health Service of the flu or hospital armies during and upon return of the JMME, which may be related, in hindsight, to cases of Covid-19 ". Without firmly denying the words of the champion, the Ministry of the Armed Forces did not specify whether or not Élodie Clouvel was in contact with military doctors to be tested or to have her symptoms compared with those of the time from Covid-19.

The hypothesis of a virus arriving from Wuhan at the end of October or the beginning of November does not therefore seem to be ruled out. "It's possible", reacts Professor Yves Cohen. "The first Chinese case that was described was around November 8. And as we know that it takes between 5 and 14 days for clinical signs to appear, we may very well have been, in early November in France, in contact with cases that could be contaminated. "

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