There is only one patient left in France for an infection with the new coronavirus out of the four who were still hospitalized on Tuesday, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, said on Friday during a trip to Saint-Étienne. In total, of the twelve confirmed cases hospitalized in France, eight were hospitalized in Paris, three in Lyon and one in Saint-Étienne.

“No more patients with coronavirus are hospitalized in Saint-Étienne (…) Today there is only one patient hospitalized in this context, near here, in Lyon, whose discharge we are awaiting soon. “, specified the minister on the sidelines of a visit to a laboratory of the School of Mines of the city.

The four people hospitalized in Lyon and Saint-Étienne were part of the group of six Britons infected at the end of January by a compatriot returning from Singapore, during a stay in a chalet in Contamines-Montjoie, in the Alps. In France, only one death from Covid-19 has been recorded, that of an 80-year-old Chinese tourist a week ago at Bichat hospital in Paris.

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This Friday, a third plane chartered by the French government since the start of the crisis repatriated from Wuhan – the epicenter of the virus epidemic in China – 28 French people and 36 nationals of other European Union countries to l Roissy airport.

The French returnees have been placed in quarantine in a holiday village in Calvados (Normandy) where they must be confined there for 14 days. The other European passengers had to be taken care of, upon their arrival, by the authorities of their country.

Since the start of the epidemic, more than 300 people had already been repatriated from China and placed in quarantine, in a holiday center in Carry-le-Rouet (Bouches-du-Rhône) and in the premises of the National School senior officer of firefighters (Ensosp) in Aix-en-Provence. Most of them came out with the certainty of not being contaminated by the new coronavirus.

In China, the toll now exceeds 2,200 dead and 75,000 people infected, according to the latest official figures released Thursday.