Study Says Coronavirus Was In Italy In December 2019

A study revealed that the coronavirus was already present in two major cities in northern Italy in December, more than two months before the first case was detected. The researchers at the national health institute study of waste water have discovered the genetic traces of Sars-CoV-2 as the virus is officially known in samples of waste water collected in Milan and Turin at the end of last year, and Bologna in January.

The ISS institute said in a statement that the first known native case of Italy was reported in the middle of February. It further added that "The results help understand the onset of virus circulation in Italy." They also "confirm the by-now consolidated international evidence" regarding the strategic function of sewer samples as an early detection tool.

Italy was the first European country to suffer from coronavirus and was the first in the world to impose a nationwide lockdown. Other than a couple of visiting Chinese tourists the first known case was reported in the town of Codogno in the Lombardy region.

The government has announced Codogno as red zone on February 21st and ordered to shut everything, followed by nine other towns across Lombardy and Veneto. It would extend the shutdown across the country by early March.Italy has reported more than 34,500 deaths.

ISS water quality expert Giuseppina La Rosa and her team examined 40 waste water samples from October 2019 to February 2020. The results verified by two different methods in two separate laboratories showed the existence of SARS-CoV-2 in samples taken on December 18, 2019 in Milan and Turin and in Bologna on January 29, 2020.

Samples from October and November 2019 were negative, showing the virus had yet to arrive, La Rosa said. The institute said that the data was consistent with the results obtained from retrospective analysis patients samples hospitalised in France, which found cases positive for SARS-CoV-2 from the end of December.

It also pointed to a recent Spanish study that has identified genetic traces in waste water samples collected in Barcelona in mid-January some 40 days before the discovery of the first indigenous case was discovered.

Researchers worldwide have been tracking the spread of coronavirus through waste water and sewage since the onset of the coronavirus, finding genetic traces from Brisbane to Paris and Amsterdam. Given the large number of coronavirus cases with little or no symptoms, waste water testing is seen as a potential way of signalling the presence of virus even before the first cases are clinically confirmed in areas untouched by the epidemic or where it has moved out.