French family's legal action over death after 'Covid contact' visit

The family of an elderly woman who died of Covid-19 has filed a legal complaint of manslaughter by recklessness in relation to her death.

The woman, from Nièvre, in the southwest of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, was visited by a couple who were contact cases a week before she was admitted to hospital in November with the virus and placed in an artificial coma.

Her daughter, Fabienne Condamin, said she did not know at the time that the couple, who were relatives of the deceased, had been tested for Covid-19 but had not received the results prior to visiting her mother, who was 80 and had a heart condition.

One of the visitors developed the illness after the visit.

The following week, her mother was taken to hospital. "I spent a long last moment with her, to say goodbye to her, and when I left the intensive care unit, I knew it would be over, " her daughter told reporters.

She has now filed a complaint of manslaughter by recklessness in the hope that 'this absurd death can serve a purpose’.

"Someone who knows they are a contact case, someone who takes the initiative to test themselves, someone who also presents the first symptoms of Covid-19 and who in a context of confinement will despite everything visit elderly people, we consider (...) that they commits an obvious fault of recklessness," her lawyer said.

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