Re:SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in healthy blood donors during ...
by notahacker on Thursday May 21, 2020 @05:58AM
(#23256594)
And to an extent it's not even that. The samples were taken from the 24th Feb. Italy had its first localised lockdowns on 21st, at which point the disease had been around for long enough for a couple of identified cases to have died. The 'at the start' of the outbreak figure is for the weeks between this and the whole of the north of the country being shut down on 8th March. The figure is higher than expected [with a wide confidence interval] and is in Milan rather than the villages initially isolated, but we know initial testing capacity wasn't there, transmission can be asymptomatic and severe symptoms lag.
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Re:SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in healthy blood donors during ...
by makomk on Thursday May 21, 2020 @06:31AM
(#23256797)
Prior to about the 21st of Feb Italy only reported three cases of coronavirus in the entire country with the most recent case being a Wuhan evacuee at the start of the month: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-health-italy/first-i... As you say they started to lock down very soon after that. February 24th is very much at the start of the detected outbreak, and it seems safe to conclude that the virus was indeed already circulating widely at that point. They went from basically no reported cases to the most cases in the world outside China and their healthcare system being overwhelmed in days.
While other experts had pointed out that Italy likely had more cases than already reported, the numbers they threw around were more in the hundreds range rather than substantial percentages of the entire population: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/world/europe/italy-corona... This does explain a lot though, both about what happened in Italy and why containment efforts in other Western countries failed whilst ones closer to China geographically seem to have done much better.