RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Italy announced yesterday, February 2nd, that local doctors and scientists have managed to isolate the 2019-nCoV coronavirus, which has already caused the death of more than 300 people in China.
Another 14,300 have been infected on Chinese territory and some 20 countries have confirmed cases. The announcement was made by Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza during a press conference at the Lazzaro Spallanzani Hospital in Rome, renowned for treating contagious diseases.
“In the past few hours, at Spallanzani Hospital, the virus of the new coronavirus has been isolated. This is important news at a global level. The isolation of the virus means many opportunities to study it, understand it and know what can be done to prevent its spread,” said the minister.
According to Speranza, the isolated virus will be made available to the entire international community. “Now it will be easier to treat it,” he said. The accomplishment was achieved by virologists from the Institute of Infectious Diseases at the Spallanzani center in less than 48 hours from the positive diagnosis of two patients in Italy.
The partial sequence of the virus isolated in the Italian laboratory, called 2019-nCoV/Italy-INMI1, was deposited in the GenBank database.
Source: ANSA, UOL