Italian Doctor: ‘Virus Clinically No Longer Exists in Italy’

The novel Coronavirus is losing its strength and lethality, a senior Italian doctor said Sunday.

Coronavirus Getting Weaker and Weaker

Italy was the first country in Europe to be truly hit hard by the novel Coronavirus, rapidly reaching the 100,000 cases milestone, although since then infections in the country have only been slowing down. Nevertheless, Italy still has the third highest death toll in the world from the disease, with at least 33,415 deaths, and is the sixth globally when it comes to number of cases, coming in at at least 233,019.

Despite those statistics, infections and fatalities have been falling during May, leading the country to unwind some of the lock-down restrictions, which are among the toughest introduced on the continent. Italian doctors are also beginning to show new info that the virus keeps growing weaker.

“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” Alberto Zangrillo, head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, said. “The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he added.

Zangrillo said that the country has to go back to normal, adding that some experts were way too alarmist about a potential second wave of infections. A second doctor from Northern Italy backed up Zangrillo’s claim, saying that the virus has definitely become much weaker compared to two months ago.

“It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different,” Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at Genoa’s San Martino hospital, said.

The Italian government, however, is still urging people to approach life with maximum caution and keep to the social distancing and health guidelines, until there’s sufficient evidence to “support the thesis that the virus has disappeared.”