Clinical and virological data of the first cases of COVID-19 in Europe: a case series

30 Mar, 2020
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic spread within China, and secondarily also outside China, with a basic reproductive number estimated to be from to and a mortality rate of around 2-3%. In the EU (and European Economic Area) and the UK, as of March 6, 2020, 5544 cases have been reported (423 in France), including 159 deaths (seven in France).

So far, several studies have described demographic, clinical, and biological characteristics of patients with COVID-19, and radiological or pathological findings associated with COVID-19. More specifically, these studies have reported the most common symptoms, incubation periods, biological abnormalities, radiographic abnormalities, CT abnormalities, and treatment data. In addition, they have described varying degrees of illness and their severity: mild, severe, or critical. They have reported proportion of complications, including acute respiratory distress syndrome, or case fatality rates, and variables associated with these complications and death.

In this Article, through a detailed and comprehensive sampling strategy, we report the clinical and biological features of the first five cases of confirmed COVID-19 in Europe, which occurred in France, and their dynamics in parallel with changes in their viral load, based on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA detection.