Good luck? Genetics? Girio island in Italy escaped the outbreak of COVID

Paola Muti has prevented the coronavirus from spreading rapidly to 800 densely populated islanders. Many of them are familiar to her. Her mother, born in Gilio Island, often stays in family homes with fascinating views of the sea through the parlor windows.

However, even after a few days, the islanders of Giglio did not develop COVID-19 symptoms, even though the disease appeared to favor the spread of wildfire.

Gilièges, as the residents know, socialize on the granite stairs that act as steep alleys near the harbor and narrow streets near the castle on a hill. Pirate.

Dr. Armandoski Affino, the island’s only doctor, shared Muti’s concerns about a local outbreak for about 40 years.

“Virtually all normal childhood illnesses, such as scarlet fever, measles, and chickenpox, develop within a few days,” he said in an interview at an office near the port.

Muti, a breast cancer researcher at the University of Milan, who is a professor of epidemiology, decided this time to find out why that wasn’t the case.

The inhabitants were probably infected, but were there no symptoms? Was it genetic? anything else? Or are you lucky?

“Dr. Schiafino came to me and said to me, “Hey Paola, this is unbelievable. In this complete pandemic, no one is ill in every case that came to the island.” So I told myself: “Yes, where can we do research? No, I’m here,” Muti said.

By then, Muti was confined to the island by strict Italian blockade rules. What particularly embarrassed her was that many of the islanders were in close contact with visitors.

Giglio’s first known COVID-19 case was a man in his 60s who arrived on February 18-a few days before the first “native case” in Italy was diagnosed in the north. The man came to Giglio for a relative’s funeral and “was coughing all through the worship service,” Muti said.

The virus primarily spreads through droplets when someone coughs, sneezes, or has a conversation. The man returned to the ferry the same day for the mainland and died three weeks later in the hospital.

On March 5, four days before the national blockade was declared, three more visitors from the mainland visited and tested positive on the island. One of them was a German from Northern Europe, the first epicenter of the European outbreak. He spent several days at Giglio, including many public eateries, with his long-time friends. A week later, he was tested on the island for a bad cough and the result was positive. He self-isolated at Giglio’s house.

There were other known cases, including islanders who lived in Australia for two years before returning to Giglio in mid-March to meet their parents during the lockdown in mid-March. Three days after arriving in Giglio, he had a mild fever and had a positive reaction, Muti said. He self-isolated at his parents’ house.

No other incidents have surfaced in Giglio, with tourists from all over Italy arriving since the blockade was lifted in early June.

Giglio is part of Tuscany, and its public health center immediately sent a kit to test for antibodies and see if others had COVID-19. In late April, just before the first blockade travel restrictions were relaxed, islanders were lined up outside the island’s schools and clinics for blood tests.

Of the approximately 800 year-round residents, 723 volunteered for the test.

Regarding the possibility of infection, “We not only wanted to do it and be quiet, but also “to help science,” he said, working in a graveyard when an infected man gathered with other mourners. Said Simone Madaro.

Pastor Lorenzo Pascotti, a worshiper for about fifty mourners and a tried priest himself, recalled the habit of “has a greeting, a hug, and a kiss after the funeral.” .. Then came the procession to the cemetery, where there were “more hugs and kisses.”

According to Muti, only one of the tested islanders had the antibody, a Greek man who traveled to the island on the same ferry as a visitor to Germany.

Intrigued by the island’s indigenous people for why the virus didn’t seem to interact, Muti hadn’t come to a conclusion until she was preparing to leave the island this month. She will put together her research for final publication.

Muti speculates that the islanders may not have been exposed to enough COVID-19 to infect them.

The possibility was also expressed by Massimo Andreoni, head of infectious disease at Tor Vergata Hospital in Rome. He pointed out that some patients simply lacked the ability to spread the disease, for reasons that were still unclear.

Opportunities could have played a role, said Daniel Altman, professor of immunology at Imperial College London. “It may be more or less trivial-no one was infected because there were few contacts through good luck,” he said in an email exchange.

Alternatively, Altman also pointed out that “it could be something important and exotic,” such as a genetic variation common to the island’s population.

Having many of the diglyces that have crossed generations, Muti wants to do genetic research sometime when funding is available.

Giglio is located in the pristine waters of protected marine reserves, and the islanders are reassuring that they live in a natural environment that they consider healthy, no matter what the findings of Muti.

“Are we okay as an island and as an environment?” Domenico Pinatelli said the old man was sitting with his friend in a chair on the stone street above Giglio.