Italy is the first country in Europe to manage to isolate a new coronavirus. Italian Minister of Health Roberto Speranza announced this while visiting a hospital in Rome on Sunday.
According to Euronews, Roberto Speranza said the discovery will be immediately made available to the entire international community in the interests of taking further measures against the outbreak.
Congratulating the scientists, Giuseppe Conte, the Italian Prime Minister, described this news as “very important for the development of treatments”, expressing his pride in Italy’s National Health Service, which is “one of the best in the world.”, Euro Weekly News reported.
A vaccine may be available within six months.
A former director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) on February 2 praised the Chinese government, medical workers and scientists for their open, effective and transparent efforts in battling against the new virus epidemic.
The University of Macau has stepped up the development of a rapid test kit developed with patented technology. They say the whole virus detection process can now be completed within 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, the newly-built Huoshenshan Hospital, one of two emergency field clinics, was handed over to a medical team of the People's Liberation Army on Sunday in the city of Wuhan, epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. It has room for up to a thousand beds and the first patients were due to arrive on Monday.
The hospital is based on the model of the Xiaotangshan Hospital in Beijing, a hospital China built during the SARS epidemic in 2003 that treated one seventh of the nation's SARS patients.
The Chinese Air Force has reportedly carried out one of its biggest non-combat operations in a decade. Eight planes landed in Wuhan on Sunday, with nearly 800 medical workers and 58 tons of supplies.
