The new coronavirus may have circulated in northern Italy for weeks before it was detected, seriously complicating efforts to track and control its rapid spread across Europe.
The claim follows laboratory tests that isolated a strain of the virus from an Italian patient, which showed genetic differences compared with the original strain isolated in China and two Chinese tourists who became sick in Rome.
Massimo Galli, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Milan and director of infectious diseases at the Luigi Sacco hospital in Milan, said preliminary evidence suggested the virus could have been spreading below the radar in the quarantined areas.
“I can’t absolutely confirm any safe estimate of the time of the circulation of the virus in Italy, but … some first evidence suggest that the circulation of the virus is not so recent in Italy,” he said, amid suggestions the virus may have been present since mid-January.
The beginnings of the outbreak, which has now infected more than 821 people in the country and has spread from Italy across Europe, were probably seeded at least two or three weeks before the first detection and possibly before flights between Italy and China were suspended at the end of January, say experts.
The findings will be deeply concerning for health officials across Europe who have so far concentrated their containment efforts on identifying individuals returning from high risk areas for the virus, including Italy, and people with symptoms as well as those who have come in contact with them.
The new claim emerged as the World Health Organization warned that the outbreak was getting bigger and could soon appear in almost every country. The impact risk was now very high at a global level, it said.
“The scenario of the coronavirus reaching multiple countries, if not all countries around the world, is something we have been looking at and warning against since quite a while,” a spokesman said.
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A viral outbreak that began in China has infected more than 83,000 people globally, with almost 3,000 deaths. As the list of countries hit by the illness edged towards 60, with Mexico, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand, Nigeria, Azerbaijan and the Netherlands reporting their first cases, the threats to livelihoods were increasingly eyed as warily as the threats to lives.
While there were some tentative indications the outbreak may be slowing in China, South Korea’s tally of infections exceeded 2,300, while cases in France and Germany continued to rise.
With new cases being reported across Europe, and the first case confirmed in sub-Saharan Africa – in an Italian man who recently returned to work in Nigeria – governments were increasingly moving towards proposing ever more stringent measures to control the global outbreak
As $5tn (£3.9tn) has been wiped off global stock markets amid fears over the impact of the virus, Switzerland moved to ban all gatherings of more than 1,000 people until 15 March, announcing the postponement of the Geneva Motor Show.
The British budget airline easyJet announced it would axe 500 flights to Italy, alongside plans for freezes on hiring and pay, as other airlines announced similar measures.
In Iran, where there has been one of the most serious outbreaks outside of China, with 34 people known to have died and 388 infected, the government announced on state television on Friday that all schools would be closing for three days from Saturday.
“Based on assessments, it was felt that there was a need for closing all the schools in the country and for this reason all the schools in the country will be closed for three days starting from tomorrow,” the country’s health minister, Saeed Namaki, said.
Similar measures were under way in Japan, prompting angry reactions from parents and teachers, who on Friday were told by the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, that all schools would close for a month.
In another drastic move, the northern island of Hokkaido, where there has been the largest number of cases in Japan, on Friday declared a state of emergency. Its population of about 5 million people were told to refrain from venturing outside their homes over the weekend.
Meanwhile authorities in Moscow announced they were deporting 88 people who they said had violated the country’s quarantine measures.
The Nigerian case is just the third to be confirmed in Africa– a fact that has puzzled health specialists given the continent’s close ties to China – and was not picked up for 48 hours, part of a familiar pattern in the spread of the disease from California to Germany.
According to Nigerian officials, the Italian man affected by Covid-19 stayed in a hotel near the airport on the evening of 24 February, then continued to his place of work in neighbouring Ogun state.
He was treated on 26 February at his company’s medical facility before health practitioners called government biosecurity officers, who transferred him on 27 February to a containment facility in Yaba, Lagos.
This World Health Organization warned that porous borders, a continuing flow of travellers and poorly resourced healthcare systems meant the risk of an outbreak across Africa was “very, very high” and raised significant concerns about the ability of “fragile health systems” to cope.
Experts, meanwhile, said the scale of the task involved in tracing suspected cases would put strain on developed countries.
“The worry is that there may be other countries that are less prepared, and that the virus may become more widespread worldwide,” said Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“If that were to happen, even [developed] systems would possibly struggle to be able to check every possible suspect.”
In other developments, Mexico’s assistant health secretary announced that the country now had two confirmed cases of coronavirus.
And at least 23 guests left H10 Costa Adeje Palace hotel in Tenerife on Friday, four days into a 14-day imposed quarantine, after the Canary Islands regional government on Thursday cleared 130 holidaymakers to leave the hotel. About 700 holidaymakers remained quarantined in the compound.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/coronavirus-may-have-been-in-italy-for-weeks-before-it-was-detected