Italy's earliest coronavirus strains not from China, new study suggests

The earliest novel coronavirus strains spreading in Italy's Lombardy region did not come directly from China, according to a new study.

After Milan's researchers analyzing more than 300 blood samples of COVID-19 patients and tracing the origin of the viral strains by changes in their genes from Lombardy region between February and April, researchers found that the variant of the coronavirus is observed frequently in European countries, such as the Netherlands, Switzerland and France, but seldom detected in China, said a non-peer-reviewed paper published Monday on medRxiv.org, a preprint server for health sciences.

Italy was the first country in the world that barred all flights from China after the outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019. But the genome sequencing suggested "a transmission chain not directly involving China," the researchers led by Professor Carlo Federico Perno of Milan University said. 

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