France announces 1st death of virus patient outside Asia

France announces 1st death of virus patient outside Asia

SeattlePI.com

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PARIS (AP) — France on Saturday reported the first death outside Asia of a person infected with the new virus from China, an 80-year-old Chinese tourist who two French hospitals initially turned away, and also reported a new confirmed case that brought the country's total to 12.

Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said she learned Friday night about the death of the patient, a man who tested positive for the virus in late January and had been in isolated in intensive care at a Paris hospital.

The patient, who was from the province in central China that's been hardest-hit by the virus, had a serious lung infection. All the previous deaths outside mainland China due to COVID-19, the disease the virus causes, were in Asia: one each in Japan, the Philippines and Hong Kong.

The Health Ministry announced Saturday night that France's latest case is a British person who, like five other infected Britons, had stayed in an Alpine chalet with a businessman from England who had attended a conference in Singapore. The ministry said the new patient been tested daily while in isolation at a Lyon hospital before testing positive Saturday.

There were contradicting reports about the timing of when the Chinese tourist who died in France became ill and started to receive treatment. the tourist's illness. Buzyn said he arrived in France on Jan. 16 and was hospitalized on Jan. 25 under strict isolation measures but his condition deteriorated rapidly.

Other French medical officials had said previously that the patient arrived in France on Jan. 23 and quickly fell ill.

Dr. Yazdan Yazdanpanah, head of Bichat's infectious diseases unit, said the man visited two French hospitals. Because he “didn’t fulfill the definition” of someone considered at risk of infection with the virus, the hospitals decided it was unnecessary to test him,...

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