The coronavirus appears to have been circulating in Italy since as early as September 2019, signaling that covert 19 might have spread beyond China months earlier than previously thought.

早在2019年9月，冠狀病毒似乎就已經在意大利流傳，這意味著隱蔽的19號病毒可能比之前認為的早幾個月傳播到中國之外。

The World Health Organization has said the disease was unknown before the outbreak was first reported in Wuhan in December, and Italy's first covert 19 patient was detected on February 21 in a town outside Milan.

世界衛生組織表示，12月武漢首次報告疫情前，該病還不明朗，2月21日，意大利在米蘭郊外的一個小鎮發現了首例隱性19患者。

But the cancer institute looked at past lung cancer screenings and found that 12% of volunteers in a screening trial had developed coronavirus antibodies between September 2019 and March 2020 and well before February.

但癌症研究所對過去的肺癌篩查進行了研究，發現在2019年9月至2020年3月以及2月之前，有12%的篩查試驗志願者出現了冠狀病毒抗體。

A further specific antibodies test was carried out by the University of CNF.

CNF大學又進行了特異性抗體檢測。

The same research, a co author of the study, told Reuters that it showed four cases dated back to the first week of October were also positive for antibodies neutralizing the virus, meaning they had got infected in September.

同樣的研究，這項研究的共同作者告訴路透社，它顯示四個案件追溯到10月的第一週也是陽性的抗體中和病毒，意味著他們在9月感染了。

He also said that it showed the virus could remain in a population with a lowly fallacy rate, only to surge again later.

他還說，這表明病毒可以留在一個謬誤率很低的人群中，只是以後會再次激增。

Italian researchers had previously told Reuters in March that they reported are higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019, another sign that the new coronavirus might have circulated earlier than previously thought.

意大利研究人員曾在3月告訴路透社，他們報告是比平時更高的嚴重肺炎和流感病例在倫巴第2019年最後一個季度，另一個跡象表明，新的冠狀病毒可能比以前認為的更早地流通。