The search for the zero patient in France continues. Among the possible avenues: the athletes who participated last October in the World Military Games in Wuhan, the city of origin of the coronavirus. Some French athletes, such as Olympic vice-champion of modern pentathlon Elodie Clouvel, claimed to have returned from China with symptoms resembling those of the virus. But the Ministry of the Armed Forces has blocked the communication of these athletes, which it manages and remunerates, and assured Wednesday afternoon in a press release that it had received no report of illness that could, a posteriori, be related to the coronavirus. Back on this opaque affair which revives speculation about the appearance of the Covid-19 in France.
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"Many World Military Games athletes have been very ill"
The affair began with the statements of Elodie Clouvel. The modern pentathlon world champion (and Olympic vice-champion in Rio in 2016) affirmed during an interview at the end of March to the local channel Television Loire 7, exhumed by Le Parisien , that she thought she had been contaminated with her companion Valentin Belaud, pentathlete too, during these Games in which they participated in the French delegation.
AFP was able to consult two versions of this interview online, including one where the part in question was cut. "I think that with Valentin we already had the coronavirus, well the Covid-19, because we were in Wuhan for the World Military Games in late October. And in fact, it turns out that after the World Military Games we all got sick with the same symptoms. Valentin missed three days of training. I was sick too. I had a big conjunctivitis (…) it was too weird… I had stuff that I haven't had it before. "
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"We weren't more worried than that because we weren't talking about it yet, but it's true that we were coming back from Wuhan and that's when the virus developed and we started talking about it, "adds Élodie Clouvel. "There are a lot of athletes from the World Military Games in particular who were very sick. We had contact with the military doctor recently who said to us' I think you got it because there are a lot of people who were sick from this delegation. "
Communication locked by the Ministry of the Armed Forces
But since her declarations, Elodie Clouvel can no longer speak publicly. The ministry asked some 400 members of the delegation present in China to remain silent. "There have not been, within the French delegation of the World Military Games, cases declared to the Health Service of the influenza armies or hospitalization during and upon return of the JMME, which can be related, a posteriori , to cases of Covid-19 ", reacted the ministry for the Armed forces. It does not specify whether or not the young woman was in contact with military doctors to be tested, or compare her symptoms of the time with those of the new coronavirus.
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"The French delegation benefited from medical follow-up, before and during the games, with a dedicated medical team made up of almost twenty staff," added the ministry, noting that "when the World Military Games summer (JMME) took place from 18 to 27 October 2019, in Wuhan in China, the epidemic linked to Covid-19 was then not known "and that" the first case of Covid-19 was not reported by China to the WHO, as of December 31, 2019 ".
However, according to information from Europe 1, several of these athletes presented symptoms similar to the coronavirus. But as no test has been done, you may never know if it was a military athlete who brought back a virus from Wuhan that was not yet identified.