Coronavirus case confirmed in Finland, cases in France increase to five
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A new case of coronavirus has been confirmed in Finland, according to local media — the first in the Nordic region.
France also confirmed Wednesday evening its fifth case of the virus. That raises the total number of known coronavirus cases in Europe to 10. Four cases have been identified in Germany.
The patient in Finland is a 32-year-old female tourist from Wuhan, who arrived in the country on Thursday and was staying at a ski resort in the northern town of Saariselkä. She began showing flu-like symptoms Sunday and went to the hospital on Tuesday.
Lapland’s health district is now checking 15 people who may have been in contact with the virus. Mika Salminen, the director of Finland’s Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), told the Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper that the risk of the disease spreading in Finland is still small.
Meanwhile, French Health Minister Agnès Buzyn said her country’s fifth patient is the daughter of a Chinese tourist who had previously been diagnosed.
France was the first European country to report imported cases of the new coronavirus. The first three were people who had recently been to China.
On Tuesday, officials said a German man, who has not been to China, was infected with the virus by a colleague visiting Bavaria from China, in what is believed to be the first human transmission on European soil.
