Coronavirus (COVID-19) Collection
Infection sustained by lineage B.1.1.7 of SARS-CoV-2 is characterised by longer persistence and higher viral RNA loads in nasopharyngeal swabs
Starting from March 2020, nasopharyngeal swabs collected in three provinces (Chieti, L’Aquila and Teramo) of Abruzzo, a central Region of Italy, were tested daily for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA at the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “G. Caporale” (IZSAM) (Danzetta et al., 2020).Timing of national lockdown and mortality in COVID-19: The Italian experience
On February 20, 2020, a 30-year-old patient admitted to the intensive care unit in Codogno Hospital (Lombardy, Italy) tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a novel beta-coronavirus that causes Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). During the next 24 h, the number of reported positive cases increased to 36 (Sebastiani et al., 2020; Grasselli et al., 2020).Preliminary estimates of the reproduction number of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Republic of Korea and Italy by 5 March 2020
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has caused 6088 cases and 41 deaths in Republic of Korea, and 3144 cases and 107 death in Italy by 5 March 2020, respectively. We modelled the transmission process in the Republic of Korea and Italy with a stochastic model, and estimated the basic reproduction number R0 as 2.6 (95% CI: 2.3–2.9) or 3.2 (95% CI: 2.9–3.5) in the Republic of Korea, under the assumption that the exponential growth starting on 31 January or 5 February 2020, and 2.6 (95% CI: 2.3–2.9) or 3.3 (95% CI: 3.0–3.6) in Italy, under the assumption that the exponential growth starting on 5 February or 10 February 2020, respectively.
