ILLUSTRATION. People wearing masks take selfies on Capitoline Hill, as Italy faces a surge in coronavirus infections, in Rome, Italy, October 22, 2020.
Source: Reuters | Editor: SS Kurniawan
KONTAN.CO.ID – ROMA. In fact, the new corona virus has been circulating in Italy since September 2019. A study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the City of Milan, Italy, suggests that Covid-19 may have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said the new coronavirus and Covid-19, the respiratory disease it causes, were unknown before the outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, Central China, in December last year.
Italy’s first Covid-19 patient was detected on February 21 in a small town near Milan, in the northern region of Lombardy.
However, the findings of Italian researchers, published by the Tumori Journal, show that 11.6% of the 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in the lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020 had developed coronavirus antibodies long before February this year.
A further specific SARS-CoV-2 antibody test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same study entitled “Unexpected Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies in the Pre-Pandemic Period in Italy”.
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The corona virus can circulate for a long time
That shows, four cases in the first week of October were also positive for antibodies that neutralize the virus. Which means, they had been infected in September, according to Giovanni Apolone, co-author the study.
“These are the main findings: people without symptoms not only become positive after serological testing, but also have antibodies that are capable of killing the virus,” Apolone told Reuters.
This means that the new corona virus can circulate in the community for a long time and with a low death rate, not because it disappears but only jumps again, Apolone added.
Italian researchers told Reuters In March, they reported a higher than usual number of pneumonia and flu cases in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019.
This is a sign that the new coronavirus may have been circulating earlier than previously thought.
