Speaking to Corriere della Sera, Massimo Galli, head of the department of infectious diseases at Sacco Hospital in Milan and professor of the same discipline at the University of Milan said that the explanation for the rapid contagion that has been seen in Italy would be that the outbreak Coronavirus occurred in a hospital.
“We have experienced the most unfortunate situation possible,” said the expert, who recalled that something similar happened in South Korea in 2015 during the MERS epidemic.
The first investigations pointed out that the zero patient was a 38-year-old man who had been in contact with a person who was infected in China, but that thesis is now discarded. The authorities continue to look for the origin of the epidemic.
The theory of the hospital would help explain the rapid spread of the virus, as it is a contagion in which other patients, like the medical staff, would have been exposed to that theoretical patient zero, who could have been an Italian who had traveled to China or a national of this country, whose population in this area of Italy is numerous.
While the authorities fight against the clock to locate the origin of the outbreak, 7 people have died in Italy from the coronavirus and the number of infections has gone from only 3 last Friday, to 229 according to official figures offered on Monday afternoon.