What does it mean for Italian patients to trace the source of COVID-19 at the end of last year

For the pneumonia epidemic in COVID-19, which is still raging in many countries, virus traceability has always been one of the key tasks of scientists around the world. With more and more research results being disclosed, many evidences show that Wuhan may not be the “source of COVID-19” as some foreign media say. Scholars from Milan University in Italy and Memorial University in Newfoundland in Canada recently published a paper in EmergingInfectiousDiseases, an academic journal affiliated to CDC in the United States, saying that they found that a throat swab sample collected in Italy in early December last year was positive for COVID-19 test, nearly three months before the first COVID-19 case reported by Italy in February 2020. Domestic scholars said in an interview with Global Times on the 10th that, combined with some previous research results, this new study shows that Italy probably had COVID-19 spread before the Wuhan outbreak, but it does not mean that Italy is the source of the virus.

The above research is led by scholars from Milan University, who analyzed throat swab samples of 39 Italian patients from September 2019 to February 2020. Through laboratory tests, a sample from a 4-year-old boy was positive for COVID-19, and the sequencing was 100% consistent with the sequences of Wuhan-HU-1 strain and COVID-19 strain which spread around the world. However, this study could not confirm the source of the detected strain. “Compared with antibody detection, the nucleic acid detection adopted by Milan University’s latest research is more reliable, and it is also more powerful to prove that foreign countries may have COVID-19 pneumonia cases earlier than Wuhan.” An unnamed virologist in China told the Global Times on the 10 th. The reporter analyzed that, and this sample is the same as the virus sequence of the earliest case in Wuhan, indicating that the source is the same. “It may have been infected in Italy before countries realized the existence of COVID-19.”

A scholar said that many studies have suggested that there were traces of SARS-CoV-2 before Wuhan outbreak in Italy, Spain, the United States and other countries, including human samples and environmental samples, all of which detected the existence of virus. Peter Foster, a geneticist at Cambridge University, recently said in an email interview with Global Times that there is a 95% probability that SARS-CoV-2 will spread among humans between September 13 and December 7, 2019. In addition, Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang Province reported on the 10th that there was a new local case in Dongning City and suifenhe city City, and the two cities entered a wartime state. According to the latest report of epidemic situation in Chengdu, on 10th, Lidu re-examined the isolated and closely connected people, and found 2 confirmed cases and 2 asymptomatic patients.