PARIS — French doctors may have made a breakthrough in the race to establish where and when the coronavirus pandemic first hit Europe, by establishing that the virus may have been in France much earlier than anyone thought.
A team of researchers in the city of Colmar in northeastern France announced in a release last week that it had identified two X-rays, from Nov. 16 and Nov. 18, showing symptoms consistent with the novel coronavirus. NBC News has exclusively obtained these scans.
If confirmed, this is evidence that the virus was spreading in Europe two months before France declared its first cases Jan. 24 and well before COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, had been officially identified in China.
Source: NBC News