A doctor in northern Italy has claimed he saw patients with Wuhan coronavirus symptoms a month before Italy’s “patient one” was diagnosed as the first confirmed case.
Dr Pietro Poidomani practices medicine in the town of Cividate al Piano, which lies around 16 miles from the city of Bergamo, one of the areas of Italy hardest hit by the Chinese virus outbreak that has claimed tens of thousands of lives across the country.
On the 7th of January, Dr Poidomani said that he reopened his small practice after the Christmas break and met with 12 patients who all described having breathing troubles, an unusual cough, and a fever.
After giving all five patients an x-ray, he noticed the same interstitial thickening in their lungs that has become common in cases of the Wuhan coronavirus, Corriere Della Sera reports.
The cases, if confirmed to be coronavirus, would have occurred a month before the first official case, or “patient one” was diagnosed on the 20th of February.