Study suggests traces of coronavirus in wastewater of Milan and Turin last December

Genetic material of the novel coronavirus was detected in the samples collected from Milan and Turin sewage last December, according to an announcement released by an Italian institution on Thursday.

The study, conducted by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, one of the leading institutions of the Italian National Health Service, suggests the virus already existed in wastewater collected from the entrance of treatment plants in northern Italy before the country's first COVID-19 case being reported.

40 samples from October 2019 to February 2020 and 24 samples from September 2018 through June 2019 serving as a control group to rule out the possibility of the presence of the virus have been analyzed, according to researchers.

"Results confirmed by two different methods in two different laboratories indicate the presence of SARS-COV-2 RNA in samples taken in Milan and Turin on December 18, 2019 and in Bologna on January, 29, 2020," said Giuseppina La Rosa at the Department of Environment and Health of the Italian National Health Institute.

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