• COVID-19.Italy confirms its first death from coronavirus and isolates 50,000 people in the north of the country
  • Timeline: This has been expanding day by day the alert for the Covid-19 coronavirus: more than 2,000 dead in China

The outbreak of coronavirus that has forced Italian authorities to isolate more than 50,000 people in three locations in the Lombardy region and that has already left two dead, a 77-year-old man and another person, goes back to February 1 after that the so-called 'patient 1' spent a night with a colleague who had just returned from China. Afterwards, marathons (one of them in Protofino), work , football matches , outings ... This is how the 'patient 1' spread the coronavirus through Italy.

According to the newspaper Corriere della Sera , a dinner with some coworkers in Codogno on February 1 was the time when the infection found its escape. At that table was DG , manager of a company in the town of Fiorenzuola d'Arda (Piacanza), who lives more in China than in Italy, the 'patient 0' . Most likely this is the day of infection.

Virologist Giorgio Palù argued that it is possible that this man who traveled from China had a clinically insignificant amount of coronarivus in his body at the time of the exams, but that he would have infected his friend during dinner.

DG , who would be the 'patient 0' , is also admitted. As his father told Corriere della Sera , the toilets arrived in the middle of the night, put a mask on his son and took him away. "Scared? Of course it was. My son called me this Thursday to tell me that he had been tested and so far he had been negative , and that he is well. However, the husband of one of his other daughters has positive, which reinforces the hypothesis that DG was infected with the virus, but that it was cured and that it has always been well, therefore, asymptomatic.

Precisely for this reason, he is still being held at the Sacco hospital in Milan : because experts will try new tests to find out if he has developed antibodies against Covid-19 . If he did, it means he was infected and came out unscathed from the virus that has caused the outbreak in Italy.

An outbreak that has isolated the neighbors of Codogno, Castiglione d'Adda and Casalpusterlengo , three towns of about 35,000 inhabitants located about 60 kilometers from Milan; an outbreak that has already left its first fatality , a 77-year-old man; an outbreak that has 250 quarantined people waiting for the results to confirm if they are infected; an outbreak that already has 15 confirmed cases , including 5 toilets , a pregnant woman and the so-called 'patient 1' .

An amazing spread

The 'patient 1', 38 , was infected at that dinner and spread the virus with a speed that has surprised the experts themselves gathered since Thursday at a summit of constant urgency. The man, hospitalized in serious condition in the hospital of Codogno , ignores that he is the 'patient 1' of the coronavirus in Italy. His active social and sports life is what has made the experts of the ASL of Milan and the Department of Health, led by Giullo Gallera , are rebuilding the contacts that the manager of Unilever de Casalpusterlengo has had in these last 19 days. Test after test, contact after contact. Such a situation had never been seen in Europe until now .

At home, his wife, 8 months pregnant , is hospitalized at the Sacco hospital. His test was positive, but his condition is particularly serious .

Then the sport . On February 2, Mattia participates in a race in Liguria between Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino. A week later, on February 9, he runs in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano . Among those infected, a friend of his. The authorities review everyone else, one by one.

On February 4, the 'patient 1' is again in an evening with friends in which DG is again, who has not returned to China given the situation in the Asian country, but does not imagine the nightmare in the that your friend and an entire region is about to live. It is precisely during this evening at a bar in Casalpusterlengo where three pub clients get sick , even without having had direct contact with Mattia. And so, from one to another, and another one.

On the 13th , six days before he was hospitalized, the 'patient 1' goes to work at the Unilever offices in Casalpusterlengo, where about 160 people work. Maintains contact with several of them. Two days later, on February 15 , the 'patient 1' goes to a course in Codogno in the morning. In the afternoon, the town of Madignano was drawn to play a football match with his team, Picchio Somaglia, against the Amatori Sabbioni. That same day he travels to Rivergaro where he goes out to dinner with two friends at the Bellaria restaurant. That night has the first symptom.

On February 17 he is still feeling bad and calls the doctor, who is going to visit him at home around 1:00 p.m. 24 hours later, at 2:45 p.m. on February 18 , he goes to the Codogno relief home, but is not hospitalized. On February 19 at 03.12 a.m. he returns to the hospital where he is finally admitted.

Investigations are still ongoing, the exact reconstruction of everything that happened in these 19 days is complicated even for experts.

At the moment the 'patient 1' is in a very serious condition in a Sacco hospital in Milan. "It is a huge beast, weighs 90 kilos and has a very strong structure. But now it is very serious , intubated and sore," said his parents, who live in Castiglione d'Adda, and are in quarantine, without any symptoms, in a interview. The last time they talked to their son was Wednesday. "It was not good, but it was not in the ICU, it was on the floor," they say.

Co-workers, family members, doctors and nurses who treated the 38-year-old man when he showed up at the hospital on Wednesday have been quarantined. Local authorities have decided to close the emergency room where he was treated .

In fact, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday from Brussels that "everything is under control", and stressed that the government maintained a "very high level of protection."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Italy
  • Coronavirus
  • Covid 19
  • international

ItalyItaly confirms its first death from coronavirus and isolates 50,000 people in the north of the country

Health Coronavirus closes Usera: massage parlors and restaurants lower the blind

Health The end of quarantine: See you in Wuhan