Source: France Info – (french/english translation by Verity Base)
CoVid-19 traced back to December 27 in France. Professor Yves Cohen, head of the revitalization service at the Avicennes hospitals in Bobigny and Jean-Verdier de Bondy; Revised PCR tests performed in late December. Of the approx. 50 patients, one tested positive for coronavirus.
Covid-19 would have been identified in France from December 27 last year and not by the end of January -as the first cases officially known so far, confirms Professor Yves Cohen, on May 3, 2020 at Franceinfo. With his team, he resumed PCR (sticks) tests performed in December 2019 and January 2020 on 50 patients with pneumonia. One of them eventually tested positive for coronavirus: a man in his 50s.
At that time, the Chinese authorities had not yet raised the alarm about the new virus, and the market in Wuhan, where the disease according to the Chinese originated, was not closed yet. It did not happen until January 1, when the market was closed for sanitary procedures and disinfection. WuHan was closed down on December 23, 2019.
Tested twice
24% of the patients we tested had a history similar to Covid-19, explains Yves Cohen. We repeated PCR tests to look for another diagnosis, to try to find traces of coronavirus. Of these 14 patients, one of them was tested positive. We tested PCR tests twice to make sure there were no errors and both times turned out to be positive. “
In the patient record for this patient, a scan “shows signs of being completely Covid-19, with a highly inflammatory biology – that would correspond to the virus”