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Coronavirus was present in France in December - a month before the country's first confirmed cases, according to an intensive care chief who tested old samples.

Yves Cohen said negative tests for flu and other coronaviruses on 24 patients in hospital with respiratory problems during December and January had been checked.

And in a development experts say would be of huge significance, one of the revisited samples came back positive for COVID-19.

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Dr Cohen, head of resuscitation at a Paris hospital, said the test had been repeated a number of times in case of error.

"Of the 24 patients, we had one positive result for COVID-19 on 27 December when he was in hospital with us," he said.

He told France's BMTV that medical staff had then phoned the man to discuss the new finding.

"He was sick for 15 days and he infected his two children, but not his wife, who works in a supermarket, at the fish stall," he said.

"We wondered [she worked with] fish of Chinese origin, but she only works on French products.

"Then we learned by chance that she worked alongside sushi sales or people of Chinese origin."

He suggested that the man's wife may have had COVID-19 but not shown any symptoms, adding that it was the responsibility of other agencies to investigate further.

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Former World Health Organization director Professor Karol Sikora told Sky News the development "could be significant" if the finding turned out not to an error.

"It implies that Wuhan may not be the only source of the virus as at that time there were not people travelling between that region and France and therefore not the potential for transmission," he said.

"It could be that various versions of the virus evolved at different times in different places and that this is just a very similar one.

"The only way to establish this is to sequence this sample, which I imagine will be happening over the coming days."

Professor Sikora, who is chief medical officer at Rutherford Health, professor of medicine at the University of Buckingham and former director of the WHO Cancer Programme, added that many samples were stored by medical institutions for years and that many of these would now be tested to learn more about coronavirus.

France had announced its first confirmed cases on 24 January. Officials unveiled plans last week to begin easing lockdown measures across the country.