By Lynn Allison From Newsmax

A top doctor in Italy said he’s found patients in his hospital have lower levels of the coronavirus in their upper respiratory tracts than they did two months ago. Alberto Zangrillo, head of San Raffaele Hospital in Milan said “the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy.”

This comment caused an uproar form experts worldwide, according to The Washington Post. Michael Ryan, a top official with the World Health Organization (WHO), said Monday that “we need to be exceptionally careful not to create a sense that all of a sudden the virus by its own volition has now decided to be less pathogenic. That is not the case at all.”

Even Sandra Zampa, Italy’s undersecretary of the health ministry, called Zangrillo to task.

“Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians,” she said, according to Business Insider.

Experts said that Zangrillo’s observations are more likely the result of declining cases so there is less virus in circulation, according to the Post. While cases of COVID-19 have declined in former hotspots like northern Italy and New York City, they have risen dramatically in Brazil, Peru and India.

“I believe it’s safe to say that the differences that doctors are reporting in Italy are entirely due to changes to medical treatment and in human behavior which limit transmission and numbers of new infections initiated by large inocula—a larger dose of the virus appears to be worse—rather than changes in the virus itself,” Vaughan Cooper, an infectious disease expert at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine told the Post.

According to WHO, the coronavirus continues to infect people at the same rate as when the pandemic began, and the same number of people, about 20% of the population, develop severe cases.

According to Business Insider, Maria van Kerkhove, the technical lead at WHO said:
“In terms of transmissibility, that has not changed. In terms of severity, that has not changed,” she said during a press briefing Monday.

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