As per details, doctors at a hospital in Paris discovered that a patient who went to a health facility in late December with respiratory problems was infected with COVID-19. The man contracted the virus a month before France confirmed its first coronavirus case.
The doctors had originally collected the samples to test for the flu using a polymerase chain reaction test, the same test used to detect the new coronavirus which searches for bits of viral genetic material.
The patient was identified as 43-year-old fishmonger, Amirouche Hammar, a resident of Bobigny, who became infected sometime between December 14 and December 22. He went to the hospital with a dry cough, a fever and breathing problem on December 27.
Researchers and experts said the patient had the illness a month before the first case was confirmed in Wuhan. They said identifying the first infected patient could prove vital about information on the origins of the virus.
Meanwhile, the French government is investigating the report while the doctors who made the finding said that they tested the patient’s old sample twice to avoid false positives.
Coronavirus emerged in China's Wuhan city at the end of 2019 and has since been declared a global pandemic engulfing almost the entire world.
The Covid-19 infection has claimed more than 200,000 lives across the globe.
Though the deadly infestation has been contained in its epicenter of Wuhan and elsewhere in China, the virus is now spreading fast in Europe and the United States, where more than a million cases have been confirmed, with tens of thousands of them being fatal.