“Coronavirus found in a child in Milan in November 2019” – Corriere.it

Sars-CoV-2 was present in Italy more than a year ago: The analysis of oropharyngeal swab from a 4-year-old boy, transferred to the emergency room in Milan on November 30, 2019 with respiratory symptoms and vomiting. The next day he had spots on the skin similar to measles, but actually had another disease. The swab, observed many months later, showed that the cause of the disturbances was the coronavirus, more than three months before its official appearance with “patient 1” from Codogno. This was revealed by a study by the State University of Milan, published in the magazine Emerging infectious diseases.

Skin manifestations

“The idea was to retrospectively investigate all cases of rash disease identified in Milan between September 2019 and February 2020, which tested negative for measles,” he specifies. Silvia Bianchi, among the authors of the work. In fact, Sars-CoV-2 infection can cause a Kawasaki-like syndrome and skin manifestations common to other viral infections. That the virus had existed for some time was conceivable, the researchers note, and its prolonged (and silent) spread in northern Italy could partly explain the devastating impact of the first wave. The Milan State University study, coordinated by Elisabetta Tanzi, was carried out in the laboratory accredited by the WHO (World Health Organization) for the surveillance of measles and rubella.