The World Health Organization said it is “not surprising” that reports have emerged of Covid-19 circulating in France as early as December, Reuters reported. China officially alerted the WHO to the outbreak of a new coronavirus on Dec. 31, though cases were circulating before then as officials in the country sought to identify the mysterious virus.
A hospital in France retested old samples from pneumonia patients and discovered the presence of the virus that causes Covid-19 in the patient, who was treated as early as Dec. 27, according to Reuters. The French government would not confirm its first case of Covid-19 for nearly a month.
“It’s also possible there are more early cases to be found,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a U.N. briefing in Geneva. He encouraged other countries to investigate whether the virus was circulating earlier than was previously known in order to identify a “new and clearer picture” of the outbreak.
