First virus fatality outside Asia reported in France
LONDON: A Chinese tourist has died in France of the coronavirus, the French health minister said on Saturday, becoming the outbreak’s first fatality in Europe and outside Asia.
France’s health minister, Agnès Buzyn, said the tourist, who was 80 years old and from the Chinese province of Hubei, the centre of the outbreak, died at the Bichat-Claude Bernard Hospital in Paris on Friday after weeks of hospitalisation. His daughter, who also has the virus, is receiving treatment, Ms Buzyn said.
The man and his daughter were among 12 confirmed cases in France. Of those cases, seven remain hospitalised, and four have been discharged, according to health authorities.
The man’s death comes as officials in Europe grapple with preparing for the spread of the disease on the Continent, where there have been 44 cases, according to data from the World Health Organisation.
By yesterday, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases around the globe had risen to more than 69,000, with at least 1,665 deaths, almost all in mainland China. Hong Kong, Japan. the Philippines, and France have each recorded a single death.
Although the effects of the outbreak have so far been minimal in Europe, with confirmed cases in Germany, France and Britain, the outbreak was beginning to have a slowing effect on Europe’s economies.
The death in France was announced days after the World Health Organisation warned that the virus’s spread could accelerate outside China.
Germany reported two more cases just days ago, raising the total there to at least 16. And British health authorities declared the new coronavirus “an imminent threat”, although all but one of the nine patients who tested positive there have been discharged.
A British businessman who is believed to have been the initial source of at least five cases in Britain and five more in France said on Tuesday that he had contracted the virus at a conference in Singapore last month. He later travelled to a chalet in Les Contamines Montjoie, France, where he came into contact with five Britons who later tested positive for the virus.
The businessman, Steve Walsh, said he had fully recovered.
Ms Buzyn, the French health minister, did not identify the patient who died on Friday but said he had arrived in France on Jan 16.