法国巴黎公立医院集团下属两家医院的重症监护部门负责人伊夫·科昂近日透露称，法国至少在2019年12月底就出现了新冠病毒感染病例。这比法国官方宣布的首批确诊病例要早近1个月。 

There's new evidence that the coronavirus may have been in France weeks earlier than was previously thought.

最新证据表明，新冠病毒在法国出现的时间可能比之前认为的要早几周。

A French hospital which has retested old samples from pneumonia patients discovered that it treated a man who had COVID-19 as early as Dec 27, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases.

法国一家医院复检肺炎患者的旧样本后发现，该医院早在2019年12月27日就收治了一名患有新冠肺炎的男性。而直到近一个月后，法国政府才确诊了首例新冠肺炎病例。

Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that scientists had retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who tested negative for the flu.

位于巴黎北部郊区的阿维塞讷医院和让-韦迪埃医院的重症监护部门负责人伊夫·科昂对BFM电视台说，科学家复检了2019年12月和2020年1月收治的24名患者的检测样本，他们当时的流感病毒检测结果呈阴性。

“Of the 24, we had one who was positive for COVID-19 on Dec 27,” he told the news channel on Sunday.

上周日（5月3日），科昂在接受电视台采访时说：“在这24名患者中，12月27日收治的一名患者新冠病毒检测结果呈阳性。”

If verified, this finding would show that the virus was already circulating in Europe at that time -- well before the first known cases were diagnosed in France or hotspot Italy.

如果得到证实，这一发现将表明，新冠病毒当时已在欧洲传播——远在法国和疫情较为严重的意大利确诊首例已知病例之前。

The French team looked at people admitted to the hospital with flu-like illness between December 2 and January 16 who were not ultimately diagnosed with influenza. They tested frozen samples from those patients for coronavirus.

法国研究小组重审了在2019年12月2日至2020年1月16日期间因流感样疾病入院的患者病例，这些患者最终没有被确诊患有流感。他们对患者的冰冻样本进行了新冠病毒检测。

 "One sample was positive taken from a 42-year-old man born in Algeria, who lived in France for many years, and worked as a fishmonger," the team wrote. "His last trip was in Algeria during August 2019."

研究小组写道：“一份来自一名42岁男性的样本检测呈阳性，他出生在阿尔及利亚，在法国生活了多年，是一名鱼贩。他最后一次旅行是在2019年8月去了阿尔及利亚。”

The samples had all initially been collected to detect flu using PCR tests, the same genetic screening process that can also be used to detect the presence of the novel coronavirus in patients infected at the time the sample is collected.

起初，医院采集这些样本是为了通过聚合酶链式反应（PCR）检测流感，同样的基因检测程序也可以用来检测患者在采样时是否感染了新冠病毒。

Each sample was retested several times to ensure there were no errors, he added.

科昂补充说，每个样本都进行了多次复检，以确保没有错误。

France, which has seen almost 25,000 people die from the virus since March 1, confirmed its first three COVID-19 cases on Jan 24, including two patients in Paris and another in the southwestern city of Bordeaux.

法国于2020年1月24日确诊了首批3例新冠肺炎病例，其中两名患者在巴黎，还有一名患者在西南部波尔多市。自2020年3月1日以来，法国已有近2.5万人死于新冠病毒感染。

Cohen said it was too early to know if the patient whose Dec 27 test was COVID-19 positive is France’s “patient zero”. Knowing who was the first is critical to understanding how the virus spread.

科昂说，现在还不清楚这名2019年12月27日样本新冠病毒检测结果呈阳性的患者是否是法国的“零号病人”。找到“零号病人”是了解新冠病毒如何传播的关键。

Cohen said the patient had survived and that a first investigation to trace the first contamination has been carried out.

科昂说，这名患者已经康复，追踪最初感染路径的初步调查已经展开。

“He was sick for 15 days and infected his two children, but not his wife, who works in a supermarket.

科昂说：“他病了15天，传染给了两个孩子，但在超市工作的妻子没有被感染。”

“He was amazed, he didn’t understand how he had been infected. We put the puzzle together and he had not made any trips. The only contact that he had was with his wife.”

“他很吃惊，不明白自己是怎么被感染的。我们把线索集中在一起，他没有旅行史，唯一的密切接触者是他的妻子。”

Researchers in the US have also started finding evidence that the virus was infecting and killing people earlier than the country's first reported cases.

美国的研究人员也开始发现证据表明新冠病毒的感染和死亡病例早于该国首次报告的病例。

"Identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge regarding SARS-COV-2 and its spreading in the country. Moreover, the absence of a link with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of Dec, 2019," they wrote.

研究人员写道：“确认第一个被感染的患者对流行病学很有意义，因为它极大地改变了我们对新冠病毒及其在法国传播的认识。此外，首个病例与中国没有联系，也没有近期的旅行史，这些都表明，在2019年12月底，新冠肺炎已经在法国人群中传播了。”

epidemiological [ˌepɪˌdiːmiəˈlɒdʒɪkl]：adj.流行病学的