teenage girl dies of virus

It is a first in France. Julie, 16, from Essonne, died of Covid-19 this Tuesday March 24 at Necker Hospital, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, according to information from the Parisian.

It was during his daily update on the Covid-19 that the Director General of Health Jérôme Salomon announced the death of Julie, a 16-year-old French teenager, among the 1,696 deaths in hospitals following the virus. She is the first minor patient, and therefore the youngest, to die following a virus infection.

Contacted by The Parisian, Julie's sister spoke out about this tragic loss. It all started, she said, with a slight cough: "Julie just had a slight cough last week. It got worse this weekend with mucus and on Monday we went to see a general practitioner. That's when she was diagnosed with respiratory distress. no specific illnesses before that. " Her mother, Sabine, says she has never had a particular health problem before, let alone breathing. For the family, it is total misunderstanding: "We will never have answers" she explains to AFP.

"No one is invincible"

It is after an accentuation of her coughing fit and breathlessness that Julie consults her general practitioner. The latter notes a respiratory deficiency "acceptable" and call for help. The girl is first brought to the Longjumeau hospital in Essonne, where she makes a first test for the coronavirus. Then, during the night, she was transferred to the Necker hospital in Paris. She did two more tests at Covid-19 and was admitted to intensive care on Tuesday. Both tests turn out to be negative. But in the evening, Sabine, Julie's mother, receives the results of the first screening done in Longjumeau: Julie is positive at Covid-19. The girl is intubated but it is without appeal, she died at Necker hospital: "Her lungs failed. The doctors did everything they could but waking her up would have been pointless" tells his sister.

"From the start, we have been told that the virus does not affect young people. We believed it, like everyone else" explains her sister again, in shock. Her mother, for her part, reveals the difficulties in collecting such tragic information and so quickly: "It was violent. We had time to see it, but we quickly had to think about the aftermath. Given the circumstances of the epidemic, the protocol is going very quickly." According to Jérôme Salomon, the teenager was the victim of a form "severe virus" and "extremely rare in young people."

During Wednesday, the parents of students from the school where Julie was schooled were notified of her death by email. After opening a kitty for the girl, they also demand the establishment of psychological support for their children: "Like others, my daughter has been sleeping very badly since this terrible news. It is imperative that everyone can be helped psychologically, otherwise they will dive." tells a parent of a student.

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Video by Clara Poudevigne


by Melanie Bonvard