"
China: the pneumonia epidemic kills the first time
," the Figaro website announced on January 11, 2020, citing an AFP report. The world then learns with relative indifference the death of the first official victim of what will be identified later as the Covid-19. His name has never been revealed. We just know that it is a 61-year-old man who frequented the famous Wuhan animal market long considered the first focus of the epidemic. On January 23, the city of Hubei Province was confined. Today, the global toll of the epidemic has increased by more than 5 million people as China fights foot by foot to contain any new restart of the epidemic a few weeks before the Winter Olympics.
Read also Covid-19: will the Omicron wave be the last?
January 5, first dispatch
The alert had been given a week earlier, on January 5. An AFP dispatch reported that day a "
mysterious pneumonia
" in China. “
Chinese authorities reported on Sunday 59 people suffering from a mysterious pneumonia of unknown origin, denying however that it was SARS, a viral disease responsible for hundreds of deaths in 2003. The investigation of health authorities has made it possible to determine that several patients are sellers in a market in Wuhan specializing in the wholesale of seafood and fish
, ”continues Le Figaro on its site. On January 9, the origin of the disease was identified and on January 10, Cécile Thibert from the Sciences department wondered: "Should we be worried about the appearance ofa new coronavirus in China? ”
Coronavirus identified
"
Coronavirus
".
The word, still little known to the general public, is released and settles for a long time in the vocabulary of everyone.
"
This large family includes a large number of viruses,
" explains the journalist
, some of which cause common colds, and others which can be the cause of serious respiratory complications, as is the case with SARS.
This is why the international scientific community is concerned about this epidemic outbreak and calls on China to communicate information on this virus as quickly as possible, so that other countries can test possible patients.
The coronavirus will then be identified as SARS-CoV-2.
Read also Covid-19: Wuhan laboratories would have handled coronaviruses
February 26, first death in France
On January 13, a first case was detected outside China, in Thailand.
"
The risk of introducing the SARS-like coronavirus into France, which has already killed 17 people in China, is" low but cannot be ruled out, "
" said Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn ten days later.
On January 26, three first cases were identified on national soil, travelers from Wuhan, hospitalized in Paris and Bordeaux.
In February, France mourns its first French death, a professor at a college in Crépy-en-Valois in the Oise.
The disease that struck him down now has a name: Covid-19 (for COronaVIrus Disease 2019), an acronym chosen by the WHO to designate a disease that is already a global pandemic.
