Italy Had Coronavirus in Sewage as Early as December, Study Says

[Gert van der Hoek]

19 juni 2020



The coronavirus was present in Milan and Turin’s sewage systems as early as December, two months before the first Covid-19 cases were detected in Italy, a new study shows.

“Traces of SARS-Cov-2 have been found in samples of waste water taken in Milan and Turin on Dec. 18 and in Bologna on Jan. 29,” said Giuseppina La Rosa, who led the research for a coming study from the country’s ISS National Health Institute. “More traces were detected in other test samples through January and February.”

 

[gsgs]

what means "traces" ? RNA-fragments ? Somehow I feel that this would get more attention, other wording if it were conclusive ?!

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

ISS study on waste water, in Milan and Turin Sars-Cov-2 already present in December

[FONT="Titillium Web" !important]ISS, 18 June 2020 - [FONT="Titillium Web" !important][FONT="Titillium Web" !important]Traces of the SARS-CoV-2 virus already existed in the waste waters of Milan and Turin in December 2019. A study was soon to be published by the Istituto Superiore di Sanit? carried out through the analysis of waste water collected in times prior to the occurrence of COVID-19 in Italy. The samples taken in the purifiers of urban centers in northern Italy have been used as a "spy" of the circulation of the virus in the population .[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT="Titillium Web" !important][FONT="Titillium Web" !important][FONT="Titillium Web" !important]"Since 2007 with my group * we carry out research in environmental virology and collect and analyze samples of waste water taken at the entrance of purification plants" explains Giuseppina La Rosa of the Department of Water Quality and Health of the Department of Environment and Health of the Istituto Superiore di Sanit?, which conducted the study in collaboration with Elisabetta Suffredini of the Department of Food Safety, Nutrition and Veterinary Public Health.

“The study - continues La Rosa- examined 40 wastewater samples collected from October 2019 to February 2020, and 24 control samples for which the sampling date (September 2018 - June 2019) allowed to safely exclude the presence of the virus. The results, confirmed in the two different laboratories with two different methods, showed the presence of SARS-Cov-2 RNA in the samples taken in Milan and Turin on 12/18/2019 and in Bologna on 01/29/2020. In the same cities, positive samples were also found in the following months of January and February 2020, while the samples of October and November 2019, as well as all the control samples, gave negative results ".[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT="Titillium Web" !important][FONT="Titillium Web" !important][FONT="Titillium Web" !important]This research can help understand the beginning of the virus circulation in Italy and provides information consistent with other results obtained from the retrospective analysis on samples of hospitalized patients in France, which identified a SARS-CoV-2 positive in a respiratory sample , therefore clinical, dating back to the end of December 2019, and to a recent Spanish work that found SARS-CoV-2 RNA in waste water samples collected in mid-January in Barcelona, ​​about 40 days before the notification of the first autochthonous case ". [/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

 

[gsgs]

and how many infections by Dec.18 would you need in cities like Torino _and_ Milano
to be detectable in their sewage ?
If true, I would rather conclude that it went from Italy to Wuhan.
Via Yunnan bats ;-)

also, the Italian strain from Feb,Mar has the C241T,C3037T,C14408T,A23403G, so that would have
probably been a different introduction in Feb. then

I don't buy it. Maybe some lab-contamination

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

As far as I know, airplanes go from China to Italy (and other countries) all the time? Apparently the virus has been circulating for a while before it was detected and reported.

 

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.euronews.com/2020/07/10...europe-last-year-is-highly-unlikely-says-prof

Coronavirus: Claim that COVID-19 was found in Europe last year is highly unlikely, says professor Comments
By Luke Hurst • last updated: 10/07/2020 - 07:01
A debate is ongoing over whether coronavirus could have been present in Europe prior to the outbreak in Wuhan

A professor of infectious diseases has cast doubt on claims traces of coronavirus have been discovered in wastewater around the world collected prior to the outbreak starting in China.

There have been reports of coronavirus being found in samples in Barcelona dating from March 2019, Italy in December, and Brazil in November, but these studies are yet to be peer-reviewed.

Jens Lundgren, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Copenhagen, refuted claims made by another scientist, Dr Tom Jefferson, that coronavirus could have been lying dormant around the world, before being “activated by environmental conditions”.

“Basic epidemiology will inform that there was an epicentre in the Wuhan area and then it spread from there, so I think it’s very unlikely that it’s been lying dormant for years and then suddenly popped up,” Lundgren told Euronews...