According to an athlete interviewed by BFMTV, the first French cases of coronavirus could have taken place as early as October 2019, during the World Military Games organized in October in Wuhan. He and other athletes reportedly developed symptoms when they returned from China.
- French athletes who participated in the world military games this fall in Wuhan say they had symptoms of Covid-19
- This would mean that the epidemic could have started long before the first cases announced by China
The doubt is around the “zero patient” of the coronavirus in France. With us, the first two cases of infection, in Paris and Bordeaux, were announced on January 24 by Agnès Buzyn, then Minister of Health. A few days ago, on Franceinfo, Professor Yves Cohen, head of the intensive care unit at Avicennes hospitals in Bobigny, and Jean-Verdier, from Bondy, revealed that a first case of Covid-19 was listed on December 27. in France without anyone noticing. Today, a new testimony comes to sow the disorder. According to statements to BFMTV of a French athlete who prefers to remain anonymous, the first French cases of coronavirus could have taken place as early as October, during the World Military Games organized from October 18 to 27, 2019 in Wuhan, home of the epidemic.
Indeed, the sportsman declares to have been sick during his return to France. He says he had fever, breathing difficulties, body aches. According to him, other members of the French delegation suffered the same symptoms after the competition which welcomed 10,000 athletes from all over the world. “He spent three days bedridden when that never happens to him. He thinks of a stroke of fatigue. Then, when China starts communicating, on the Whatsapp group of these athletes, we start to panic and wonder if we haven’t brought back the coronavirus, the problem is that no one has been tested.explains the BMFTV journalist who collected the athlete’s testimony on the phone.
On March 25, another sportswoman, the modern pentathlon world champion, Elodie Clouvel, had already thrown a stone into the pond on this subject. When the local channel Télévision Loire 7 asked her if she was worried about going to Asia this summer, she said no. “Because I think that with Valentin Belaud (his companion, also a pentathlete, Editor’s note) we already had the coronavirus (…) We were in Wuhan for the Military World Games at the end of October. And, in fact, it turns out that afterwards we all got sick. Valentin missed three days of training. I was sick too. (…) I had things that I hadn’t had before. We didn’t worry more than that because we weren’t talking about it yet.
The military has no plans to test athletes
Like the athlete quoted by BFMTV, Elodie Clouvel assures that “many athletes from the Military World Games” after returning from Wuhan were “very sick”. “We recently had contact with the military doctor who told us: I think you got it because there are a lot of people from this delegation who were sick..”
According to The Parisian, many patients were also detected within the Swedish delegation, strong of a hundred members at the Wuhan Military World Games. According to the Swedish Armed Forces Communications Department, “none of the people tested gave a positive result.”
On the side of France, impossible to know what really happened. According to The Parisian“he was asked most athletes to no longer respond to journalists on the subject. [La] instructions were given to them to refer the questions to the direction of the communication of the armies”. Asked by BFMTV, the army said that it had not yet planned to have the 402 French athletes present in Wuhan in October tested.
According to the latest figures released by the ministry of health Tuesday, May 5, France today records 25,531 deaths for 133,000 confirmed cases (16,060 deaths in hospital and 9,471 in nursing homes). On Tuesday, 24,775 people were still hospitalized for a Covid-19 infection and 3,430 were in intensive care.
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