Italy’s first coronavirus strains didn’t come from China, study suggests

A NEW study has suggested that the first Covid-19 variants that spread throughout Italy’s Lombardy region were not from China.

The non-peer-reviewed paper published on medRxiv.org took 371 blood samples of coronavirus patients in Lombardy between February and April and concluded that the Covid-19 strains were ones that had rarely been found in China.

The findings suggest “a transmission chain not directly involving China,” as researchers from Milan University wrote in the study.

Researchers found two different strains in Lombardy, but neither contained “viral strains isolated in the first months of the outbreak in China” suggesting they may have come from Central Europe instead.