Difficult to get a clear picture of what caused the outbreak in Italy, but from reading what is available in various organs of the press, this appears to be a reasonable summation as far as I can see, even though the index patient(s) have not been idenitifed:
- tourist or tourist couple arrive in northern Italy from China - they have no symptoms, but are carrying the virus
- Italian man catches the virus - let's call him patient A.
- Patient A feeling unwell attends hospital and (this is the crucial part and is the reason why the authorities in Italy are as mad as hell) - he is not checked for corona virus, is told he has the flu and to go home and rest.
- Hospital is now a centre for the contagion as well as patient A. People attending the hospital are infected as well as those who come into contact with Patient A and the Chinese couple (they think it was a couple who later turned up in southern Italy, felt unwell and then tested positive).
So that is how it spread - one of the Italian super spreaders (not Patient A) was a sportsman who (completely innocently since he was asymptomatic) travelled and spread the virus widely before he too felt ill and was checked for the virus.
Originally Posted by: Maunder Minimum