For Italy, it was the first country in Europe to experience the COVID-19 catastrophe, the severity of the devastation has led many local medical experts to point out that the first wave of the epidemic that arrived in Italy between February and May 2020 at least, the bad tragic situation could be worse than in Wuhan, China. Of course, this may stem from the fact that Italy is a country with an aging population. Because of this, the tracing of the COVID-19 in Europe, and the exact timing of the virus hitting Italy is something that has been widely debated.
In a recent interview at the San Martino-IST University Hospital in Italy, Matteo Bassetti, talked about how the first cases of COVID-19 could occur as early as November or even before October 2019. He said that although there is no conclusive evidence to confirm this, donor blood from his Hospital was studied, which included a large number of samples that were serologically examined and were found to be positive for SARS-Cov-2 in December 2019 sample. Therefore, Matteo believes this indicates that the virus may have landed in Europe as early as around October.
In addition, Matteo does not believe in the conspiracy theory that the virus was artificially created by the laboratory. The origin of the virus in bats is now confirmed by a great number of scientists. He pointed out it is a typical virus of animal origin and that in the past, there were many other similar viruses, such as avian influenza and swine flu.
Matteo Bassetti, head of the Infectious Diseases Clinics at the San Martino-IST University Hospital in Italy, led the research team, a multidisciplinary intermingled team of more than 25 members, infectious disease doctors, pulmonologists, intensivists, emergency room doctors, microbiologists, virologists, and hygiene experts. After the virus pandemic, it was clear that the team was one of the most published outbreak studies in the whole of Italy.
