According to official figures, the coronavirus first appeared in Europe at the end of January, but more and more studies indicate that it was probably already around much earlier. Italian researchers now state that there were already infections in September 2019.
According to researchers at the Italian Cancer Institute (INT), 11.6 percent of 959 healthy volunteers had antibodies against Covid-19 in their blood between September 2019 and March 2020 when they participated in a lung cancer study.
The University of Sienna showed with the same figures that four samples were positive for corona in the first week of October. “This means that these people were already infected in September,” researcher Giovanni Apolone told Reuters.
“This is the main conclusion: people with no symptoms were not only positive after the corona tests, but also had antibodies that could fight the virus,” Apolone said. “It means that the new coronavirus can circulate in the population for a long time and with a low mortality before it hits in full force,” the researcher concludes.
Earlier, there were already signals from France that the corona virus was already in the country in December. Italian scientists have also suspected that Covid-19 was circulating at the end of last year, but it is the first time that there is evidence that the virus already infected Europeans in September.
Bron (nen): HLN
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