Spanish virologists detected the presence of the new coronavirus in a sample taken from Barcelona’s sewers in March 2019, nine months before Covid-19 disease was identified in China
The discovery of the presence of the virus genome so early in Spain, if confirmed, would imply that the disease appeared much earlier than the scientific community thought. The Spanish study was announced on Friday by the University of Barcelona, Reuters reported.
The University of Barcelona, which has been testing wastewater since mid-April to identify potential new coronavirus outbreaks, decided to test old sewage samples and that’s how it came to the impressive discovery.
When they tested the samples collected between January 2018 and December 2019, they identified the presence of the virus genome in one of them, which had been collected on March 12, 2019. “SARS-CoV-2 levels were low but positive,” said the research leader, scientist Albert Bosch.
