For the COVID-19 epidemic that is still raging in many countries, the traceability of the virus has always been one of the focuses of scientists around the world. With more and more research results disclosed, there is a lot of evidence that Wuhan may not be the “source of COVID-19” as some foreign media call it.
Scholars from the University of Milan in Italy and the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada have published a paper in the academic journal Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Centers for Diseases for Diseases and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, saying that they found that they found that they had found that in Italy in Italy in early December.
A sample of throat swab collected by Lee tested positive for COVID-19, nearly three months before the first case of COVID-19 reported in Italy in February 2020.
In an interview with the Global Times on the 10th, domestic scholars said that combined with some previous research results, this new study shows that Italy is likely to have spread the novel coronavirus before the outbreak of Wuhan, but it does not mean that Italy is the source of the virus.
The above study was led by scholars from the University of Milan who analyzed throat swab samples from 39 Italian patients from September 2019 to February 2020. After laboratory testing, a sample from a 4-year-old boy tested positive for COVID-19 and the sequencing was 100% consistent with the initial strain (Wuhan-HU-1) in Wuhan and the subsequent global spread of the novel coronavirus strain.
However, this study cannot confirm the source of the detected strain.
“Recompared with antibody testing, the latest research of the University of Milan uses nucleic acid detection to be more reliable and more powerfully prove that COVID-19 cases may have occurred abroad earlier than Wuhan,” an anonymous domestic virology expert analyzed to the Global Times on the 10th, and this sample and Wuhan first appeared in Wuhan.
The same sequence of cases and viruses indicates the same source, “It may be that infections have occurred in Italy before countries are aware of the existence of the novel coronavirus.”
One scholar said that many studies have proposed that in Italy, Spain, the United States and other countries have found traces of COVID-19 before the outbreak of Wuhan, including human samples and environmental samples, all of which have detected the virus.
In a recent email interview with Global Times reporter Peter Foster, a geneticist at Cambridge University, also said that the possibility of the novel coronavirus will begin spreading among humans between September 13 and December 7, 2019.
In addition, Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang Province, reported on the 10th that Dongning City and Fenhe City each reported one new local case, and the two cities entered a wartime state.
According to the latest report of the epidemic in Chengdu, on the 10th, two confirmed cases and two asymptomatic patients were found.
