法國醫院發現去年12月已有新冠肺炎確診病例 French doctors say they found a Covid-19 patient from December

法國巴黎公立醫院集團下屬兩家醫院的重癥監護部門負責人伊夫·科昂近日透露稱，法國至少在2019年12月底就出現了新冠病毒感染病例。這比法國官方宣布的首批確診病例要早近1個月。

There's new evidence that the coronavirus may have been in France weeks earlier than was previously thought.

最新證據表明，新冠病毒在法國出現的時間可能比之前認為的要早幾周。

A French hospital which has retested old samples from pneumonia patients discovered that it treated a man who had COVID-19 as early as Dec 27, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases.

法國一家醫院復檢肺炎患者的舊樣本后發現，該醫院早在2019年12月27日就收治了一名患有新冠肺炎的男性。而直到近一個月后，法國政府才確診了首例新冠肺炎病例。

Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that scientists had retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who tested negative for the flu.

位于巴黎北部郊區的阿維塞訥醫院和讓-韋迪埃醫院的重癥監護部門負責人伊夫·科昂對BFM電視臺說，科學家復檢了2019年12月和2020年1月收治的24名患者的檢測樣本，他們當時的流感病毒檢測結果呈陰性。

“Of the 24, we had one who was positive for COVID-19 on Dec 27,” he told the news channel on Sunday.

上周日（5月3日），科昂在接受電視臺采訪時說：“在這24名患者中，12月27日收治的一名患者新冠病毒檢測結果呈陽性。”

If verified, this finding would show that the virus was already circulating in Europe at that time -- well before the first known cases were diagnosed in France or hotspot Italy.

如果得到證實，這一發現將表明，新冠病毒當時已在歐洲傳播——遠在法國和疫情較為嚴重的意大利確診首例已知病例之前。

The French team looked at people admitted to the hospital with flu-like illness between December 2 and January 16 who were not ultimately diagnosed with influenza. They tested frozen samples from those patients for coronavirus.

法國研究小組重審了在2019年12月2日至2020年1月16日期間因流感樣疾病入院的患者病例，這些患者最終沒有被確診患有流感。他們對患者的冰凍樣本進行了新冠病毒檢測。

"One sample was positive taken from a 42-year-old man born in Algeria, who lived in France for many years, and worked as a fishmonger," the team wrote. "His last trip was in Algeria during August 2019."

研究小組寫道：“一份來自一名42歲男性的樣本檢測呈陽性，他出生在阿爾及利亞，在法國生活了多年，是一名魚販。他最后一次旅行是在2019年8月去了阿爾及利亞。”

The samples had all initially been collected to detect flu using PCR tests, the same genetic screening process that can also be used to detect the presence of the novel coronavirus in patients infected at the time the sample is collected.

起初，醫院采集這些樣本是為了通過聚合酶鏈式反應（PCR）檢測流感，同樣的基因檢測程序也可以用來檢測患者在采樣時是否感染了新冠病毒。

Each sample was retested several times to ensure there were no errors, he added.

科昂補充說，每個樣本都進行了多次復檢，以確保沒有錯誤。

France, which has seen almost 25,000 people die from the virus since March 1, confirmed its first three COVID-19 cases on Jan 24, including two patients in Paris and another in the southwestern city of Bordeaux.

法國于2020年1月24日確診了首批3例新冠肺炎病例，其中兩名患者在巴黎，還有一名患者在西南部波爾多市。自2020年3月1日以來，法國已有近2.5萬人死于新冠病毒感染。

Cohen said it was too early to know if the patient whose Dec 27 test was COVID-19 positive is France’s “patient zero”. Knowing who was the first is critical to understanding how the virus spread.

科昂說，現在還不清楚這名2019年12月27日樣本新冠病毒檢測結果呈陽性的患者是否是法國的“零號病人”。找到“零號病人”是了解新冠病毒如何傳播的關鍵。

Cohen said the patient had survived and that a first investigation to trace the first contamination has been carried out.

科昂說，這名患者已經康復，追蹤最初感染路徑的初步調查已經展開。

“He was sick for 15 days and infected his two children, but not his wife, who works in a supermarket.

科昂說：“他病了15天，傳染給了兩個孩子，但在超市工作的妻子沒有被感染。”

“He was amazed, he didn’t understand how he had been infected. We put the puzzle together and he had not made any trips. The only contact that he had was with his wife.”

“他很吃驚，不明白自己是怎么被感染的。我們把線索集中在一起，他沒有旅行史，唯一的密切接觸者是他的妻子。”

Researchers in the US have also started finding evidence that the virus was infecting and killing people earlier than the country's first reported cases.

美國的研究人員也開始發現證據表明新冠病毒的感染和死亡病例早于該國首次報告的病例。

"Identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge regarding SARS-COV-2 and its spreading in the country. Moreover, the absence of a link with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of Dec, 2019," they wrote.

研究人員寫道：“確認第一個被感染的患者對流行病學很有意義，因為它極大地改變了我們對新冠病毒及其在法國傳播的認識。此外，首個病例與中國沒有聯系，也沒有近期的旅行史，這些都表明，在2019年12月底，新冠肺炎已經在法國人群中傳播了。”

epidemiological [?ep??di?mi??l?d??kl]：adj.流行病學的

英文來源：CNN、路透社

翻譯&編輯：yaning