Two researchers at the University of Milan’s Department of Health Biomedicine analyzed throat swab samples from 39 patients collected between September 2019 and February 2020, tested them by PCR in a laboratory certified to WHO standards, and finally detected the new coronavirus in a throat swab sample collected from a 4-year-old boy, according to a recent article on the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) affiliated medical journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
The researchers previously detected the new coronavirus in a wastewater sample from Milan last December, the article said. The current finding is consistent with other evidence of early transmission of neo-coronavirus in Europe, bringing forward the start of the outbreak to late fall 2019. This finding is epidemiologically important and critical for accurately determining the timeline of the Italian neo-coronavirus outbreak and will help protect against future outbreaks.
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