This week saw the presentation of data supporting the 2020 study by Italy’s Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (INT), that blood samples collected in Italy indicated coronavirus antibodies as early as September-October 2019. The blood samples had been collected as part of a cancer study. They were retrospectively tested after the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. The results showed that 11.6% of 959 healthy volunteers had the COVID-19 antibodies in their blood. It is suggested that the suspiciously high figure of 11.6% might be accounted for by the non-representative sampling: They were all from male smokers, 55-65 years old, although it’s not entirely clear why such a group would have significantly higher levels of COVID infection than the general population.
The World Health Organization requested that the INT provide some of its samples for re-examination, and this week, two laboratories largely confirmed last year’s results. Researcher Giovanni Apolone stated: “The results of this re-testing suggest that what we previously reported, that asymptomatic patients is a plausible signal of early circulation of the virus in Italy. If this is confirmed, this would explain the explosion of symptomatic cases observed in Italy. SARS-CoV-2, or an earlier version, circulated silently, beneath the surface.”
