Covid was circulating in Italy in September 2019, new study shows - meaning virus spread from China to Europe months earlier than previously thought
Covid-19 was circulating in Italy from as early as September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute of the Italian city of Milan has found.
The World Health Organization officially announced the new coronavirus and COVID-19, the respiratory disease it causes, after the outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, in central China, in December.
However new data from Italian researchers' findings signals that COVID-19 might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought.
Italy's first COVID-19 patient was detected on February 21 in a little town near Milan, in the northern region of Lombardy.
Mattia Maestri,Italy's coronavirus Patient No. 1, whose case confirmed one of the world's deadliest outbreaks was underway
But the newest findings, published by the National Cancer Institute's scientific magazine Tumori Journal, show that 11.6 per cent of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020, had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February.
A further specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same research titled 'Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy'.
It showed that four cases dated back to the first week of October were also positive for antibodies neutralising the virus, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, revealed.
Graph showing the number of new coronavirus deaths per day in Italy
Graph showing the number of new coronavirus cases per day in Italy
Mr Apolone said: 'This is the main finding: people with no symptoms not only were positive after the serological tests but had also antibodies able to kill the virus.
'It means that the new coronavirus can circulate among the population for long and with a low rate of lethality not because it is disappearing but only to surge again.'
Italian researchers said 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.
The first known covid-19 case to have reached the UK was a cleaner from Essex who was not tested for the disease until after a 17-day stay in intensive care.
Joanne Rogers, 51, from Colchester, Essex, became ill with flu-like symptoms in late January and spent two weeks in bed at home with the mysterious illness before being rushed to hospital.
At the time, February 15, covid-19 was still considered a far-flung virus, posing minimal risk to the UK public, with just nine people in the UK - Chinese students and those who had visited a French ski resort - being advised to isolate by Public Health England.