ABOVE: One of the hospitals where Yves Cohen works.
WIKIMEDIA, SUAUDEAU
A man living in France may have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as early as December 27, weeks before the first official coronavirus cases were reported in the country, according to a study published online Sunday (May 3) in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.
When the man, Amirouche Hammar, a 42-year-old fishmonger, visited a hospital north of Paris on December 27, he suffered from chest pains and had difficulty breathing. Doctors diagnosed him with viral pneumonia and treated him with antibiotics. “We told ourselves, ‘It’s a virus that we haven’t discovered,’ but we stopped there,” Yves Cohen, one of Hammar’s doctors who works at Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals, told BFM-TV, according to the Associated Press.
As cases of COVID-19 spread worldwide, Cohen and his colleagues decided to analyze samples taken from patients visiting the ...
