A 60-year-old man has become the first French victim of the coronavirus in the country, the health ministry announced on Wednesday, reports RFI.
The man died overnight after being rushed to a Paris hospital in serious condition on Tuesday evening, bringing the total death toll in the country to two, said the ministry's deputy head Jerome Salomon.
He worked at a junior-high school in the town of Crépy-en-Valois, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Paris, and is not believed to have travelled to an area affected by the global coronavirus outbreak, the education ministry said.
Le Parisien newspaper quoted the mayor of the teacher's hometown of Vaumoise as saying he had "begun to feel ill at the start of the (mid-term) holidays and had been quickly hospitalised."
Classes are due to resume in northern France on Monday.
France has reported four other new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours -- two in people returning from hard-hit Italy -- bringing the total number of infections to 17.
Eleven other people have recovered in France from the disease which has killed more than 2,600 people worldwide and infected almost 80,000 others, mainly in China.