RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Brazil’s government confirmed on Wednesday that a 61-year-old Brazilian man who traveled to Italy this month has Latin America’s first confirmed case of the new coronavirus spreading worldwide.
“We will now see how this virus behaves in a tropical country in the middle of summer, how its behavior pattern will be,” Brazil’s Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said in a press conference.
The Brazilian man spent two weeks in northern Italy’s Lombardy region on a work trip, where he contracted the contagious virus, the Health Ministry said.
Authorities had already said Tuesday evening that a first laboratory test for the COVID-19 virus had a positive result, and were waiting for a second test to confirm it.
Since the virus began to spread throughout the world from China, Brazil and other countries in the region have registered dozens of suspected cases, all of which previously had been discarded following tests.