Now, researchers claim that coronavirus may have been circulating in Italy as early as September 2019. The World Health Organization has said the new coronavirus and COVID-19, the respiratory disease it causes, were unknown before the outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, in central China, in December. Italy's first COVID-19 patient was detected on Feb. 21 in a little town near Milan, in the northern region of Lombardy. But the Italian researchers' findings, published by the INT's scientific magazine Tumori Journal, show that 11,6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020, had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February. Italian researchers told Reuters in March that they reported a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 in a sign that the new coronavirus might have circulated earlier than previously thought.

Source: Daily Mirror November 16, 2020 07:52 UTC