A man was admitted to hospital in Codogno, in the province of Lodi, with severe respiratory failure. He tested positive for coronavirus. He had not been to China, but is said to have had contact with a friend who had returned from the country.
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A 38-year-old man from Codogno, in the province of Lodi, around 40 kilometres from Milan, has tested positive for coronavirus and has been admitted to intensive care at his local hospital with severe respiratory failure. His prognosis remains guarded, and his condition appears to be serious.
Investigators are still trying to establish how he contracted the virus: as far as is known, he had not travelled to China in recent months. In the past few days, however, the 38-year-old is said to have had dinner with a friend who returned from China at the end of January, though it has not yet been confirmed that this friend was the source of infection: the time elapsed since that meeting is in fact greater than the virus's incubation period. "Sixteen to 18 days passed between the dinner and the onset of symptoms," noted Giulio Gallera, Lombardy region's Welfare Councillor. The friend, a manager from Fiorenzuola d'Arda who spends most of the year in China, is said to have returned between 20 and 21 January and never to have reported any health problems, apart from a mild cold around 10 February.
In the coming hours, the man will be transferred to the Sacco hospital in Milan, which has been identified, together with the Spallanzani hospital in Rome, as the reference centre for treating cases of bioemergencies. A team has already been sent to Codogno hospital to support the staff there.
Anyone who came into contact with the man has been placed in quarantine. The friend believed to have infected him has already been identified and examined, and test results are now awaited. The 38-year-old's wife, who is pregnant, has been admitted to the Sacco, and quarantine procedures have also been initiated for their relatives and work colleagues. Likewise, the medical staff and nurses who came into contact with him have been placed in isolation, and the hospital has, as a precaution, suspended all scheduled activities.
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"We have already traced the contacts of the doctors, nurses and close family members, and have already carried out swab tests on them," Gallera explained. "They have all already been placed in isolation or asked to self-isolate at home. Those living in the Codogno area should remain calm: we are acting in a thorough and timely manner. There are almost one hundred people we have been screening since ten o'clock last night."