ISSN: 2329-8731
+44 1300 500008
Department of Computer Science, of the Czech Academy of Science, University of Czech Academy of Science, Prague, Czech Republic
Research Article
Could Italy Host the New Coronavirus Before China?
Author(s): Ales Tichopad* and Ladislav Pecen
The pandemic of the COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been believed to originate in China
and spread later to other parts of the world. It is well acknowledged that the first diseased individuals appeared in
China as early as in December 2019, and possibly even earlier in November. It has also been well established that the
virus stroke Italy later in January or in February 2020, distinctly after the outbreak in China. Paper by Apolone et al.
published in a local Italian medical journal in November 2020 however exposed this chronology to doubt. By fitting
early part of the epidemic curve with the exponential model and extrapolating it backwards in time, we could
estimate the day-zero of the epidemic and calculated its confidence intervals in Italy and China. We also calculated
how probable it is that Italy encountered the virus prior 1 January 20.. View More»
DOI:
10.35248/2329-8731.21.9.234