La Rosa said the detection of traces of the virus before the end of 2019 was consistent with evidence emerging in other countries that COVID-19 may have been circulating before China reported the first cases of a new disease on Dec. 31.
People wearing protective masks walk in Malpensa airport near Milan, Italy, March 9, 2020. An analysis released late on Thursday said samples taken in Milan and Turin on Dec. 18 showed the presence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus.Scientists in Italy have found traces of the new coronavirus in wastewater collected from Milan and Turin in December 2019 - suggesting COVID-19 was already circulating in Northern Italy before China reported the first cases.
"This research may help us understand the beginning of virus circulation in Italy," Giuseppina La Rosa, an expert in environmental wastewater at the Italian National Institute of Health who co-led the research, said in a statement detailing the findings.
La Rosa said the presence of the virus in the Italian waste samples did not"automatically imply that the main transmission chains that led to the development of the epidemic in our country originated from these very first cases".
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