The team sprung into action and when the man arrived he was brought into a “highly secure room” in an area of the hospital for contagious patients.
It was in this room that the first few hours of the man’s care took place, with Prof Malvy evaluating him along with his colleague, Dr Nguyên.
The room was kitted out for the highest level of epidemiological protection, with a negative pressure airlock and all the medical staff wearing the personal protective clothing we have now come to recognise.
“Psychologically speaking, it wasn’t easy for him,” the infectious diseases specialist said. “We did everything we could to reassure him. But from the outset, he was very brave and put a lot of trust in us.”
He said that the team taking care of him was “very, very well-established”, with its members deployed on the ground during outbreaks of Ebola in Guinea, Republic of Congo and Lassa Fever in Nigeria.
It brought back difficult memories of SARS as well, a viral respiratory disease caused by a SARS-associated coronavirus.
“We asked ourselves: ‘Will this coronavirus behave like the agent causing SARS?'”
“With our knowledge of epidemics, we felt that a page had been turned and that it would not be turned back right away,” Prof Malvy added.
Then came the tests. The team took virological specimens from him and immediately sent them to the Institut Pasteur biomedical research centre in Paris where teams worked on them overnight.
Around 4 pm the following day the department received a call to say the results would be available at 6 pm and Prof Malvy and the doctor with whom he had admitted the patient went to wait in his office for the phone to ring.
Prof Malvy recounts the phone call with lucid precision. “I have to admit that given the data we have produced and confirmed, it is positive,” the woman from the institute said.
“So, now what?” Prof Malvy asked his colleague.
“I was sad,” he added. “I saw that it was a big moment for my country.”
The woman on the other end of the line told him that she was obliged to tell the French authorities straight away and that the health ministry would announce the news at a press conference that evening at 7 pm.
“Be careful, when I notify the authorities, it will be like I’ve pushed a button,” she warned. “The news will spread to a lot of agencies and departments, and without a doubt the press.”
The infectious diseases expert asked for a half-hour grace period before the woman told the authorities. In that time he informed his team, the team looking after the patient, the hospital’s directors and gave Europe’s patient zero his diagnosis.
“He was very downcast, quite tired, of course, but we had already spent a lot of time with him and we were all prepared for this information,” he said. “He was relatively serene.”
The woman’s prediction about the speed at which the news would disseminate would turn out to be true.
Prof Malvy and his colleagues returned to his office to wait for the press conference, but all of a sudden they heard a commotion outside, which they dismissed as Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protesters who had returned.
But when they looked outside they saw scores of national and international media gathered around the hospital — a French tabloid had broken the information.
