New study shows Covid-19 infections in Italy began in January

The first Covid-19 infections in Italy originate to January, stated by a scientific study presented on Friday, shedding new light on the origins of the outbreak in one amongst the world’s worst-affected countries.

Italy began testing people after diagnosing its first local patient on February 21 in Codogno, a town in Lombardy region.

Cases and deaths immediately rose, with scientists soon presuming that the virus had been around, ignored, for weeks.

Stefano Merler, of the Bruno Kessler Foundation, told a conference with Italy’s top health authorities that his institute had checked out the first known cases and drawn clear conclusions from the next pace of contagion. “We realised that there have been plenty of infected people in Lombardy well before February 20, which suggests the epidemic had started much earlier,” he said

Italy is about to ease its coronavirus lockdown, the most difficult and longest in Europe, above the following four weeks, the Corriere della Sera daily reported on Friday, although there was no official confirmation.