Italy's interior minister, who tested positive for coronavirus earlier this week, never actually had Covid-19, the government said.

The PCR test performed on Luciana Lamorgese on Monday “turned out to be wrong”, her office said in a statement, according to AFP.

She underwent two new tests on Wednesday and Thursday and both came back negative, it said, adding that she “has never been positive for coronavirus”.

The statement blamed the media for the mistake, saying real-time reporting of the positive test “did not allow the necessary and appropriate checks”.

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