16-year-old girl in France succumbs to COVID-19

By Cindi Cook

PARIS (AA) - A recent revelation on the new coronavirus has come as a grim reminder of the disease's indiscriminate nature as a 16-year-old girl in France has died from COVID-19.

Julie A. perished Tuesday evening after only having a cough four days prior. She is the youngest victim yet in the country, and had no other underlying medical conditions. Julie was from Essonne, a suburb to the south of Paris, and was treated at the Necker Hospital in the capital.

"From the start we were told that the virus doesn't affect young people," her mother Sabine said in a statement to France24 television, adding: "We believed it like everyone else."

In the most perplexing twist in this tragic case, Julie underwent several tests at the hospital after a simple cough on Saturday grew worse by Monday and the family went to see a general practitioner. Initial tests for COVID-19 came back negative, but her condition soon deteriorated and another test finally came back positive.

The infection of coronavirus in young people is very rare, according to France's Director-General of Health Jerome Salomon. "We see it in particular in certain viral infections [with] exceptional severely extreme forms," he said in the daily press briefing on Thursday.

Other young people have also succumbed to the disease, most notably a 6-year-old who also had leukemia, and a 3-year-old both in Iran, an 18-year-old in Warwickshire, England in the north, and a 17-year-old male in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the U.S. on Thursday.

France's death toll from COVID-19 stands at 1,698 with reported cases at 29,581, according to data by U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.

Worldwide, there are over 542,700 cases, with reported deaths surpassing 24,300, while more than 124,300 people have recovered.

The virus has spread to at least 176 countries and territories in the world, since it emerged in Wuhan, China in December. The World Health Organizati̇on declared the outbreak a pandemi̇c.

Despite the severity of the disease, most people experience mild symptoms and recover in due time.