Prevalence in France
On January 2020, strengthened surveillance of COVID-19 cases was implemented to identify imported cases early and to prevent secondary transmission in the community or among healthcare workers. On 24 January 2020, the first three imported cases of COVID-19 identified in France referred to persons with a recent stay in Wuhan. Two cases were detected in Paris and one in Bordeaux.[20]
Case1 was a 48-year-old male was living in France , he was travelling for professional reasons in China, Wuhan on 16 January, and flew back to Bordeaux on 22 January, while, case2 was a 31-year-old Chinese male tourist arrived in Paris on 19 January and travelled with 30-year-old Chinese female tourist (case 3) . [20]
The first cases on the European continent were diagnosed in France on 24 January 2020, while, the first case outside of China was confirmed in Thailand.[21]
As of March 5, 2020, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control( ECDC) reported 91315 COVID-19 confirmed cases in 81 countries and 3282 deaths (3,4%). In Europe, France was ranked second after Italy with 423 confirmed cases and 5 deaths (1,2%).[22]
On 7 March 2020, Santé Publique France reported 949 confirmed cases leading to 11 deaths (1,2%) [23] .
as of 10 March, in France, the most two affected regions were Grand Est with 489 cases and Ile-de-France with 468 cases, and the most effected people were aged over 75 years. On midnight of 10 March, 2020, 2030 cases were confirmed resulting 44 deaths (2,2%) and 102 cases had been hospitalized into Intensive Care Units (ICU), 38% of them were 65-year-old or less. Between 8-11 March, the number of cases increased from 1126 to 2269, and from 2,269 to 4469 cases between 11-14 March .[24]
On 26 March 2020,there were a total of 24920 confirmed cases registered in all of France with 1331 deaths.[25]
after modeled the propagation of COVID-19 from March 10 to April 14, across all French regions the total number of infected cases is expected to range from 22872 in the best case (R0=1,5) to 161832 in the worst considered case (R0=3) and the total number of death expected to vary from 1021 to 11032.[26]
The basic reproductive number (R0) was rated in different studies beginning at 1,4 up to 7,23, for France the R0 was between 1,4 and 2,3 on 13 March 2020, therefor, to reduce the R0, countries implemented serious control strategies including quarantine, isolation measures to minimize risk.
In France,138 hospitals were identified as a referral centers for the treatment of COVID-19 cases. The population was divided into 17 age-groups (5 years age-band) and can be either susceptible(S), exposed to the virus but not infectious(E), infectious (I), and removed from the chains of infection (R).also the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) capacities were identified in each French region that would be overrun by the COVID-19 epidemic, in the worst case with R0=2,25 half of French region will be overrun before 14 April 2020.[26]
Add to that since early February five French laboratories capacities had reinforced to be able to perform the diagnostic for COVID-19 and Santé Puplique France deployed the outbreak investigation tool developed by the WHO to facilitate case data management at the national and local level in France.[20]