Frenchman tested positive in December
Man believed to be country’s ‘patient zero’
WHAT YOU HAVE IS VERY SERIOUS ... BECAUSE YOU ARE COUGHING BLOOD. IT’S NOT NORMAL FLU. — AMIROUCHE HA MMAR
• The World Health Organization urged countries to investigate any early suspicious cases of pneumonia on Tuesday, as a 43- year- old Frenchman identified himself as the country’s coronavirus “patient zero” after an infection last December.
Amirouche Ha m m a r came forward to French media after a hospital near Paris revealed it had retested old flu samples and found a positive test for coronavirus dating back to Dec.
27. China reported the new virus to the World Health Organization on Dec. 31, but there were no confirmed cases abroad until Jan. 13.
Fr a n c e o ff i c i a l l y announced its and Europe’s first case on Jan. 24 in Bordeaux, but Hammar’s infection suggested the virus was circulating well before that date.
Speaking to BFMTV, he said he initially had a dry cough and fever and assumed it was the flu. However, when he started having breathing difficulties and chest pains he drove to hospital.
“They said: ‘ Perhaps you have an infection, a pulmonary infection, although it’s not certain. But what you have is very serious, very serious, because you are coughing blood. It’s not normal flu’,” Hammar said. It is unclear how the Algerian fishmonger, who has asthma and diabetes, caught the virus as he has no links to China.
One of his children was ill with unusual pneumonia shortly before him.
However, his wife works at a supermarket near ParisCharles de Gaulle airport and the doctor who revealed the case said she worked beside a sushi stall run by workers of Chinese origin.
“We’re wondering whether she was asymptomatic,” said Dr. Yves Cohen, the head of intensive care at the Avicenne hospital.
His wife said it was likely she caught it from airline passengers.
Hammar, who lives in Bobigny, about 20 kilometres northwest of Paris, returned home after several days in hospital and has since fully recovered.
He said he had no idea he’d been infected until Cohen contacted him recently.
Cohen said scientists had retested samples from 24 patients, one of which was positive.
“Identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge” regarding the spread of the coronavirus, wrote Cohen, who published a study on the matter in the International Journal of Microbial Agents.
Cohen said it was too early to say for sure whether Hammar was France’s “patient zero” as “perhaps there are others in other regions.”
The WHO said the findings could help scientists better understand the evolution of the virus.