French Researchers: "COVID-19 Emerged in France Before China"

Confirmed Cases Already Existed in November 2019... One Month Earlier Than Wuhan, China
"At That Time, Confirmed Cases Had Traveled Abroad or Contacted Pneumonia Patients of Unknown Cause"

Police officers patrolled Trocadero Square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, on the 27th of last month (local time). On the same day, France reported 26,916 new confirmed cases of COVID-19. The total number of confirmed cases reached 3,106,859.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] A study has revealed that COVID-19 existed in France about a month earlier than in China.

According to foreign media including the French daily Le Monde on the 10th (local time), Professor Fabrice Carrat's research team at the Pierre-Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health (iPLESP) in France published a paper containing this information in the European Journal of Epidemiology on the 6th. It states that COVID-19 existed in France in November 2019, a month earlier than the official report to the World Health Organization (WHO) that COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, China, at the end of December 2019. The first confirmed COVID-19 case in France verified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing was a pneumonia patient admitted to a hospital in Seine-Saint-Denis at the end of December last year.

The research team analyzed 9,144 blood samples collected for a cohort study and confirmed positive COVID-19 reactions in 13 samples taken between November 2019 and January 2020.

Among these, 10 samples were collected between November and December 2019. Professor Carrat explained that this suggests an infection rate of about one person per 1,000 population at that time.

In a survey conducted on 11 of the individuals who provided these 13 blood samples, more than half reported having traveled abroad or having contact with someone suffering from the disease. A woman in her 30s who tested positive for COVID-19 in November 2019 said her cohabitant suffered from a severe cough in October of the same year. Another woman who visited Spain in November 2019 reported contact with a family member who had unexplained pneumonia between October and December of that year.

Meanwhile, a research team from the University of Milan in Italy previously published a paper in the British Journal of Dermatology reporting that there were already COVID-19 patients in November 2019.