Rome (AFP)

Researchers at a specialized hospital in Milan (north) have managed to isolate the Italian version of the new coronavirus, which "has been going unnoticed for weeks" in the peninsula, according to these specialists who are trying to trace the source of the epidemic.

"The epidemic is not new in the country and the virus has been circulating unnoticed for several weeks, before the first confirmed cases of the disease," said Professor Massimo Galli, whose team isolated the Italian strain from virus in just four days, on the public channel Rainews 24.

"This is not an incredible discovery", rather "normal for a laboratory like ours", but it will "give a contribution to research on the dynamics of the epidemic in Italy", continued Professor Galli, director from the Sacco hospital in Milan, specializing in infectious diseases.

He said he was convinced that studying the Italian version of the virus "will help to better understand and contain this epidemic".

With 650 people tested positive, of which only 303 are considered really sick, Italy is the country in Europe most affected by the epidemic.

The Sacco research team, led by professor of immunology Claudia Balotta, worked on samples taken from three patients in the "red zone" around Codogno, in Lombardy (region of Milan in the north), hospitalized between Friday and Saturday.

Codogno (15,000 inhabitants) is the locality where the Italian epidemic started from a patient called patient 1. Patient zero has not yet been found but patient 1 is considered to be the source of the two existing foci in Italy, the second being in Veneto (north-east), near Padua.

This patient 1, a 38-year-old executive from the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever hospitalized since February 19, first in Codogno and then in Pavia, involuntarily contaminated his pregnant wife, a friend and then regulars at a Codogno bar , its doctors, health staff and patients from the local hospital, and their entourage.

- "Unnecessary controversies" -

Lombardy concentrates 403 cases of contamination on the 650 people tested positive in Italy where the coronavirus made since last Friday 17 deaths among elderly people and already suffering from serious pathologies.

Professor Balotta explained that "studying the differences between the Italian strain and the Chinese coronavirus will make it possible to establish its course in Italy, the relationships between the Lombard + cluster + (focus) and that of Veneto and all successive contagions".

Professor Galli has swept away "unnecessary controversy" over the fact that Italy has carried out too many tests (more than 12,000 since Friday), which would explain the exponential increase in the number of cases, the majority of whom are not sick.

"The increase in the number of cases that we see day by day does not correspond to new infections appearing overnight," he said, arguing that these are mostly old infections of relatives people already sick.

The researchers seek to "go back by practicing the test on all people who have been in contact with patients for whom there is clear information concerning the disease".

It is essential to return to the first versions of the virus when it appeared in Italy "to help contain the epidemic and prevent it from spreading," he insists.

According to Professor Ballotta, "it will take weeks to determine the exact date of the arrival of this strain in Italy, probably when the epidemic is over".

© 2020 AFP