It is estimated that the Corona virus has spread in Italy since September 2019

KOMPAS.com – Corona virus of Italy is thought to have spread more rapidly in the months before the first positive confirmed cases were reported.

Launch Reuters, Monday (16/11/2020), a study conducted by the National Cancer Institute (INT) in Milan, Italy, found a possibility corona virus has been circulating in Italy since September 2019.

This means that the virus has spread outside of China earlier than expected.

The World Health Organization (WHO) conveyed the existence of a new type of corona virus that causes it Covid-19 unknown before the outbreak was reported in Wuhan, China, late last year.

However, it cannot be ruled out the possibility that the corona virus has spread quietly to other places.

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On Monday (16/11/2020), WHO said it was reviewing the results from Italy and seeking clarification.

To note, the first Covid-19 patient in Italy was reported on February 21, 2020, in a small town near Milan, the northern region of Lombardy.

The findings of the Italian researchers were published in the scientific magazine INT Tumori Journal.

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The study showed that 11.6 percent 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 2020.

Meanwhile, further SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests were carried out by the University of Siena.

The results show that four cases since the first week of October 2019 have been positive for antibodies, it is possible that they had been infected with Covid-19 in September.

“These are the main findings. People without symptoms not only become positive after serological testing, but also have antibodies that can kill the virus,” said study co-author Giovanni Apolone.

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This means that a new type of corona virus can circulate in the community for a long time, with a low mortality rate.

“Not because (the virus) disappeared, it just jumped again,” said Apolone.

The WHO said it would contact the paper’s authors to discuss and arrange for further analysis of the available samples.

In March 2020, researchers Italy reported higher than usual cases of pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019.

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