maybe, maybe not.
For instance:
How early was the coronavirus really circulating in Italy?
By Yasemin Saplakoglu November 18, 2020
A new study suggests as early as September of last year, but some experts are skeptical.
The new coronavirus may have been circulating in Italy since September 2019, months before the first official case was detected in the country, according to a new study from Italy. But public health experts say that more analysis is needed for that timeline to be confirmed.
The World Health Organization's China office first picked up the scent of a mysterious cluster of pneumonia cases in the city of Wuhan from local media statements on Dec. 31 and rang the alarm bells at the start of the new year, according to the WHO's timeline. Scientists later traced the first known case of COVID-19 in Wuhan back to Nov. 17, 2019, Live Science previously reported.
But the actual pandemic timeline — from the moment the virus hopped from animals to humans to when it first crossed international borders — remains murky. Italy, one of the worst-hit countries in Europe during the first wave of the virus, recorded its first local case on Feb. 20 in Lombardy, a region in northern Italy. That case suggested that the virus had been circulating in Italy since January of this year, according to the new study published on Nov. 11 in the Tumori Journal.
{snip}
"I would be very cautious," about these findings, said Dr. George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, who was also not a part of the study. The results "have to be confirmed with different antibody tests," that look for the prevalence of antibodies that target other parts of the coronavirus.
{snip}
Something more recent would help.
Thanks.
= new reply since forum marked as read