The first COVID-19 infections in Italy date back to January, according to a scientific study presented on Friday (Apr 24), shedding new light on the origins of the outbreak in one of the world's worst-affected countries, CNA reports.
Italy began testing people after diagnosing its first local patient on Feb 21 in Codogno, a small town in the wealthy Lombardy region.
Cases and deaths immediately surged, with scientists soon suspecting that the virus had been around, unnoticed, for weeks.
Stefano Merler, of the Bruno Kessler Foundation, told a news conference with Italy's top health authorities that his institute had looked at the first known cases and drawn clear conclusions from the subsequent pace of contagion.
"We realised that there were a lot of infected people in Lombardy well before Feb 20, which means the epidemic had started much earlier," he said.
"In January for sure, but maybe even before. We'll never know," he said, adding that he believed the immediate surge in cases suggested the virus was probably brought to Italy by a group of people rather than a single individual.
