The COVID-19 pandemic in France has resulted in 39,064,146 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 168,207 deaths.
The virus was confirmed to have reached France on 24 January 2020, when the first COVID-19 case in both Europe and France was identified in Bordeaux. The first five confirmed cases were all individuals who had recently arrived from China. A Chinese tourist who was admitted to hospital in Paris on 28 January 2020, died on 14 February 2020, becoming the first known COVID-19 fatality outside Asia as well as the first in France. A key event in the spread of the disease across metropolitan France as well as its overseas territories was the annual assembly of the Christian Open Door Church between 17 and 24 February 2020 in Mulhouse which was attended by about 2,500 people, at least half of whom are believed to have contracted the virus. On 4 May 2020, retroactive testing of samples in one French hospital showed that a patient was probably already infected with the virus on 27 December 2019, almost a month before the first officially confirmed case.
The first lockdown period began on 17 March 2020 and ended on 11 May 2020. On 2 May 2020, Health Minister Olivier Véran announced that the government would seek to extend the health emergency period until 24 July 2020. Several mayors opposed the 11 May 2020 lifting of the lockdown, which had been announced by the president a few weeks earlier in a televised address to the nation, saying it was premature. Véran's bill was discussed in Senate on 4 May 2020.
From August 2020, there was an increase in the rate of infection and on 10 October 2020, France set a record number of new infections in a 24-hour period in Europe with 26,896 recorded. The increase caused France to enter a second nationwide lockdown on 28 October 2020. On 15 October 2020, police raided the homes and offices of key government officials, including Véran and Philippe, in a criminal negligence probe opened by the Cour de Justice de la République. According to a team of French epidemiologists, under 5% of the total population of France, or around 2.8 million people, may have been infected with COVID-19. This was believed to have been nearly twice as high in the Île-de-France and Alsace regions.
On 31 March 2021, Macron announced a third national lockdown which commenced on 3 April 2021 and which was mandated for all of April 2021; measures included the closure of non-essential shops, the suspension of school attendance, a ban on domestic travel and a nationwide curfew from 7pm-6am.
In February 2022, it was reported that no tests are required to enter the country, and children under the age of 12 are free from vaccination requirements.
Background
The pandemic occurred following a series of national protests, which were followed by a strike against pension reform which had been proposed by President Emmanuel Macron in his election manifesto. The pension reform strike was the longest strike in modern French history. In President Emmanuel Macron's second address to the nation on the pandemic on 16 March 2020, he announced the suspension of all reforms, notably those of pensions.
On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan, Hubei, China, who had initially come to the attention of the WHO on 31 December 2019. On 21 January 2020, Agnès Buzyn, Minister of Solidarity and Health declared that "The risk of introduction into France is low but it cannot be excluded".
Timeline
December 2019 – March 2020: First cases to lockdown
First cases
On 2 December 2019, a man was admitted to Hôpital Albert Schweitzer (Colmar); on 7 May 2020, the director of the medical imagery department claimed that the man had been positive for COVID-19 in December 2019. It is possible the sample was contaminated. His thoracic scan, taken in December 2019, was one of several suspicious scans identified by the hospital as being typical of COVID-19, the earliest of these suspicious scans having been on 16 November 2019.
On 27 December 2019, a man was admitted to Avicenne Hospital and tested for influenza, which came back as negative. On 3 May 2020, Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the hospital, said that following a retest of the man's December sample, it had come back positive for COVID-19. Cohen said it was too early to know if the man had been France's "patient zero".
On 23 January 2020, the French Minister of Health's office published an analysis of the situation, and on the same day Air France suspended its flights from and to Wuhan, and reduced the frequency of its flights from and to Beijing and Shanghai.
On 24 January 2020, the first COVID-19 case in Europe was confirmed in Bordeaux. The patient, a 48-year-old French citizen from China, who arrived in France on 22 January 2020, was hospitalised at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Bordeaux. He was placed in isolation, and the authorities tried to trace people who had been in contact with him. On the same day that Agnès Buzyn said that "The risks of propagation of the virus in France are extremely low", two more cases were confirmed in Paris – a couple who had returned from China on 18 January 2020. The 31-year-old man and his 30-year-old partner, both from Wuhan, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and were hospitalised at Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital in Paris. On 26 January 2020, Buzyn declared that the French government had millions of masks which could be distributed to the population if necessary.
On 28 January 2020, an 80-year-old Chinese tourist from Hubei tested positive and was hospitalised at Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital. The following day, his 50-year-old daughter tested positive and was admitted to the same hospital. The death of the 80-year-old on 14 February 2020 marked the first death from COVID-19 outside of Asia.
On 30 January 2020, a Paris doctor who had come into contact with a Chinese tourist whose infection was confirmed upon her return to China was confirmed positive for COVID-19. The same day, Air France suspended all flights to mainland China, except for a single daily flight to Beijing and Shanghai.
On 31 January 2020, Marie Fontanel, the President counselor for solidarity and health, quit her job to help her husband in the coming municipal elections. She would be replaced only one month later. The same day, all the countries of the Schengen Area, except France, suspended the issuing of visas in China.
Les Contamines-Montjoie cluster
On 8 February 2020, then-Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn confirmed five new cases which originated from a group of people who were on a holiday in Les Contamines-Montjoie, Haute-Savoie. They contracted the infection from a British national who had attended a conference in Singapore a few days before. Another British national, who had stayed in the same chalet as the five other individuals at Les Contamines-Montjoie, tested positive for COVID-19. On 18 February 2020, Minister of Health, Olivier Véran – who replaced Agnès Buzyn after she stood down to run in the Paris mayoral election for La République En Marche! – announced that only four people remained infected in France. These four, all British nationals, three from the first group of Les Contamines-Montjoie and a fourth case which was discovered later, underwent quarantine at the hospital. The last remaining British national was discharged six days later.
Sundry cases
In late February 2020, multiple cases appeared in France, notably within three new clusters, in Oise, Haute-Savoie, and Morbihan.
On 25 February 2020, a French teacher from Crépy-en-Valois died; on the same day, a Chinese man who had returned from China was confirmed as a carrier of SARS-CoV-2, but showed signs of recent recovery. A 64-year-old man from La Balme-de-Sillingy, who returned from a trip to Lombardy on 15 February, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and was treated in Centre Hospitalier Annecy-Genevois, Épagny-Metz-Tessy. His wife also tested positive and was admitted to the same hospital as her husband.
On 26 February 2020, a 36-year-old man, who had made multiple trips to Lombardy, tested positive and was treated in Nouvel Hôpital Civil, Strasbourg. A 60-year-old French teacher from Oise was first admitted to Creil Hospital, then transferred to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, where he died a few hours later. A 55-year-old man from Oise was admitted to the intensive care unit at CHU Amiens-Picardie, Amiens.
The same day, during an audition by the French Senate, Jérôme Salomon, the French Directeur général de la Santé, declared that "A mask shortage is not a subject".
On 27 February 2020, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran announced that France had 38 cases of COVID-19 on its soil, with 20 new cases detected including a cluster in the Oise caused by close contacts with patients that were infected in Egypt.
On 28 February 2020, one new case was confirmed, a 23-year-old fashion student from Nice who had recently returned from Milan. Landes confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the region, a woman who tested positive at Centre Hospitalier de Mont-de-Marsan and underwent isolation.
Mulhouse cluster
A religious week in Mulhouse that took place from 17 to 24 February 2020 was involved in the rapid spread of the virus to eastern France and beyond. Linked cases developed from early March in Orléans, Besançon, Saint-Lô, Belfort, Dijon, Mâcon, Agen, Briançon, Paris, Corsica, and French Guiana.
The annual gathering of the Christian Open Door Church between 17 and 24 February 2020 in Mulhouse which was attended by about 2,500 people became a significant cluster in the spread of coronavirus in France. Alerted by a parishioner and by 18 family members who tested positive on 1 March, the pastor notified the health authorities. A man who lived alone in Nîmes – and who had driven back alone from Mulhouse and who otherwise had no close contacts – tested positive, and the flurry of reported cases locally on 2 March brought the existence of a Mulhouse cluster to light.
On 3 March 2020, seven participants in the evangelical rally – including five members of a local family and a general practitioner from Bernwiller – had tested positive for the virus. Starting on the evening of 3 March 2020, the local helpline of the Emergency medical services recorded an unprecedented flood of distress calls, from people who had attended the gathering. According to an investigative report by Radio France, at least half of the attendees had contracted the virus; in an interview on France Info, the pastor of the church admitted that 2000 attendees may have been infected. It is said that no specific health advice existed in light of the threat at the time. The source of the initial infection has not been determined; furthermore, as different attendees were welcomed each day, and due to the absence of any attendance register, epidemiological follow-up subsequent to the discovery of attendees who tested positive was rendered impossible. Even President Emmanuel Macron had spent several hours electioneering on 18 February 2020 in the Bourtzwiller district close to the church. It was only on 2 March 2020 when the health authorities woke up to data that there was an outbreak all over the country linked to the religious meeting, by which time secondary infections had spread out of control.
A Radio France investigation identified that one nurse who had attended the event was the origin of a subsequent cluster in Strasbourg at her workplace at the Strasbourg University Hospitals involving some 250 hospital colleagues. Five returnees from the Mulhouse rally were confirmed in French Guiana on 4 March 2020. On 5 March 2020, a retired couple from Lot-et-Garonne and another person from Deux-Sèvres who had attended the same Mulhouse gathering were declared positive for the disease. Five new cases from this cluster were registered in Corsica, and three in Normandy. On 6 March 2020, with 81 cases that had been detected in the previous 24 hours in Mulhouse, the departmental prefect declared that the means were no longer sufficient to systematically screen all suspected cases; only the most serious patients were to be hospitalised. The department of Haut-Rhin, in which Mulhouse is situated, imposed strict limits on the gatherings; all schools were closed henceforth.
Repatriations
On 31 January 2020, approximately 220 French returnees from China landed at Istres-Le Tubé Air Base, aboard an Airbus A340 from Esterel 3/60 transport squadron stationed at Creil Air Base. These evacuees were quarantined in a holiday camp in Carry-le-Rouet. A second wave of repatriation took place on 2 February 2020 when 65 evacuated French nationals on board a chartered Airbus A380-800 Hi Fly Malta landed at the Istres air base. A third repatriation of 38 French occurred on 8 February 2020 under the auspices of the British government.
On 21 February 2020, a further thirty French people who had been staying in Wuhan were repatriated to France and placed in quarantine at Branville, in the Calvados. On 13 March 2020, twelve trainee gendarmes at the School of Gendarmerie of Tulle (Corrèze) saw their internship in Spain terminated, with them and their 20 companions repatriated. They had been confined from 10 March 2020 following the positive test results of two of their Spanish cohort.
Municipal elections
The first round of municipal elections in France took place on 15 March 2020 against the backdrop of the government decision to move to Stage III of measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Stringent restrictions on public life involving the closure of bars, restaurants and other businesses considered non-essential were set to begin the following day. Then-Health Minister, Agnès Buzyn, resigned on 16 February 2020 to run for the Paris mayor for La République En Marche!. She is succeeded by Olivier Véran, a neurologist. The decision to press ahead with the election was justified as being critical to democratic life in the country, despite concerns about how a second round could be held as the toll of infections and deaths continued to rise. In the end, the turnout of registered voters was 40%, lower than achieved in 1971 – the previous record lowest turnout.
A number of communes in various parts of the country reported that despite the safety measures put in place by the government, some candidates and assessors had subsequently developed symptoms or tested positive for the virus.