когда началось

[Const]

ROME (Reuters) - The new coronavirus was circulating in
Italy since September 2019, a study by the National Cancer
Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows,
signaling that COVID-19 might have spread beyond China
earlier than previously thought.

Italian researchers' findings, published by the INT's
scientific magazine Tumori Journal, show that 11,6% of 959
healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening
trial between September 2019 and March 2020, had developed
coronavirus antibodies well before February.

A further specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried
out by the University of Siena for the same research
titled "Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in
the pre-pandemic period in Italy".

It showed that four cases dated back to the first week of
October were also positive for antibodies neutralizing the
virus, meaning they had got infected in September,
Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters.


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