Italy’s earliest coronavirus strains did not arrive from China, study suggests
- Strains from Covid-19 patients in the Lombardy region ‘did not contain viral strains isolated in the first months of the outbreak in China’
- One possible route to Italy was from Central Europe, where strains with similar mutations were detected, researchers say
Researchers in Milan collected more than 300 blood samples of Covid-19 patients from the Lombardy region between February and April and traced the origin of the viral strains by changes in their genes.
Italy was the first country in the world that put up a travel restriction barring all flights from China, but the genome sequencing suggested “a transmission chain not directly involving China”, said the researchers led by Professor Carlo Federico Perno of Milan University in a non-peer-reviewed paper posted on medRxiv.org on Monday.
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Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease Covid-19, was isolated and sequenced by Chinese researchers in early January. It was not until February 20 that the first case of local infection was confirmed by Lombardy’s health authorities, but “sustained community transmission was ongoing way before” that date, the researchers said.