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Early evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Milan, Jan-Feb 2020

BACKGROUND: A few studies have suggested that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was present in Northern Italy several weeks before its official detection on February 21, 2020. On the other hand, no clinical data have been provided so far to support such hypothesis. We...

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Autores principales: Milani, Gregorio P., Casazza, Giovanni, Corsello, Antonio, Marchisio, Paola, Rocchi, Alessia, Colombo, Giulia, Agostoni, Carlo, Costantino, Giorgio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8243623/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34193222
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13052-021-01095-4
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author Milani, Gregorio P.
Casazza, Giovanni
Corsello, Antonio
Marchisio, Paola
Rocchi, Alessia
Colombo, Giulia
Agostoni, Carlo
Costantino, Giorgio
author_facet Milani, Gregorio P.
Casazza, Giovanni
Corsello, Antonio
Marchisio, Paola
Rocchi, Alessia
Colombo, Giulia
Agostoni, Carlo
Costantino, Giorgio
author_sort Milani, Gregorio P.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: A few studies have suggested that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was present in Northern Italy several weeks before its official detection on February 21, 2020. On the other hand, no clinical data have been provided so far to support such hypothesis. We investigated clinical-epidemiological evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among children and adults referring to emergency department (ED) in the main hospital of the center of Milan (Italy) before February 21, 2020. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of medical records of ED visits at the Fondazione Ca′ Granda Policlinico, Milan between January 11 and February 15 in 2017, 2018, 2019 and in 2020 was performed. The number of subjects referring with fever, cough or dyspnea was compared between the studied period of 2020 and the previous 3 years, by calculating a standardized referral ratio (SRR, number of observed cases in 2020 divided by the number of expected cases according to 2017–2019) and the corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS: In the pediatric ED, 7709 (average 2570/year) and 2736 patients were visited during the period 2017–2019 and in the 2020, respectively. Among adults, 13,465 (average 4488/year) and 4787 were visited during the period 2017–2019 and in the 2020, respectively. The SRR was 1.16 (95% CI 1.10–1.23) in children and 1.25 (95% CI 1.16–1.35) in adults. The ratio for the two (children and adults) SRRs was 0.93 (0.84–1.02), suggesting a trend towards a higher frequency in adults compared to children. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that SARS-CoV-2 might have spread in Milan before February 21, 2020 with a minor trend among children.
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spelling pubmed-82436232021-07-01 Early evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Milan, Jan-Feb 2020 Milani, Gregorio P. Casazza, Giovanni Corsello, Antonio Marchisio, Paola Rocchi, Alessia Colombo, Giulia Agostoni, Carlo Costantino, Giorgio Ital J Pediatr Research BACKGROUND: A few studies have suggested that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was present in Northern Italy several weeks before its official detection on February 21, 2020. On the other hand, no clinical data have been provided so far to support such hypothesis. We investigated clinical-epidemiological evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among children and adults referring to emergency department (ED) in the main hospital of the center of Milan (Italy) before February 21, 2020. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of medical records of ED visits at the Fondazione Ca′ Granda Policlinico, Milan between January 11 and February 15 in 2017, 2018, 2019 and in 2020 was performed. The number of subjects referring with fever, cough or dyspnea was compared between the studied period of 2020 and the previous 3 years, by calculating a standardized referral ratio (SRR, number of observed cases in 2020 divided by the number of expected cases according to 2017–2019) and the corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS: In the pediatric ED, 7709 (average 2570/year) and 2736 patients were visited during the period 2017–2019 and in the 2020, respectively. Among adults, 13,465 (average 4488/year) and 4787 were visited during the period 2017–2019 and in the 2020, respectively. The SRR was 1.16 (95% CI 1.10–1.23) in children and 1.25 (95% CI 1.16–1.35) in adults. The ratio for the two (children and adults) SRRs was 0.93 (0.84–1.02), suggesting a trend towards a higher frequency in adults compared to children. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that SARS-CoV-2 might have spread in Milan before February 21, 2020 with a minor trend among children. BioMed Central 2021-06-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8243623/ /pubmed/34193222 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13052-021-01095-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Milani, Gregorio P.
Casazza, Giovanni
Corsello, Antonio
Marchisio, Paola
Rocchi, Alessia
Colombo, Giulia
Agostoni, Carlo
Costantino, Giorgio
Early evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Milan, Jan-Feb 2020
title Early evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Milan, Jan-Feb 2020
title_full Early evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Milan, Jan-Feb 2020
title_fullStr Early evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Milan, Jan-Feb 2020
title_full_unstemmed Early evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Milan, Jan-Feb 2020
title_short Early evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Milan, Jan-Feb 2020
title_sort early evidence of sars-cov-2 in milan, jan-feb 2020
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8243623/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34193222
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13052-021-01095-4
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