The COVID-19 epidemic is believed to have started in late January 2020 in France. Here we report a case of a patient hospitalised in December 2019 in an intensive care unit in a hospital in the north of Paris for haemoptysis with no aetiological diagnosis. RT-PCR was performed retrospectively on the stored respiratory sample and confirmed the diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Based on this result, it appears that the COVID-19 epidemic started much earlier in France.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924857920301643

world is crazy on virus

During the study period, 14 (24%) patients out of 58 admitted for ILI were included in our analysis
(Table 1).One sample was positive taken from a 42 years old manborn in Algeria, who lived in France
for many years, and worked as a fishmonger. His last trip was in Algeria during August 2019. One of
his child presented with ILI prior to the onset of his symptoms. His medical history consisted in
asthma, type II diabetes mellitus. He presented to the emergency ward on December 27 2019 with
hemoptysis, cough, headache and fever, evolving for 4 days. Initial examination was unremarkable
and the performed CT scan revealed bilateral ground glass opacity in inferior lobes (Figure 3).
at admission he had a lymphopenia, an elevated C-Reactive Protein and fibrinogen while Pro
Calcitonin was in normal range value. No pathogen was identified on sputum sample collected in the
emergency ward. The patient was admitted to the ICU with antibiotic therapy, and evolution was
favorable until discharge on December 29,2019

Covid-19 was already spreading in France in late December 2019, a month before the official first cases in the country

Early community spreading changes our knowledge of covid-19 epidemic

This new case changes our understanding of the epidemic and modeling studies should
adjust to this new data