There isn’t a whole lot of good news to go around these days, but we’ll take it whenever we see it.
Italy was once a nation besieged by COVID-19, thanks to some tight business ties to China in which unwitting travelers were quick to inadvertently spread the illness. And when Italy found itself wholly ravaged by the virus, much of the rest of the world took notice.
Now, thankfully, scientists in the European nation have some good news.
“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s coronavirus contagion.
“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 told RAI television.
Italy has the third highest death toll in the world from COVID-19, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21. It has the sixth highest global tally of cases at 233,019.
However new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere on the continent.
This will certainly come as welcome news to a globe that has long been ravaged by the killer illness.
