The B.1.525 variant was detected in a person who had recently returned from a trip to a country in Africa, authorities in the Campania region announced on Tuesday.
It is the first time the strain has been found in Italy, after it was first identified in the UK and Nigeria in December.
Since then, around 130 cases have been confirmed worldwide, including in Denmark, the US, Canada, France, Australia, Spain and a few other countries.
Researchers say it has similarities to other variants that were first spotted in England, Brazil and South Africa and have since been found in countries around the world, including Italy.
While those three variants are believed to be more contagious and more resistant to certain vaccines, it is not yet known what risk the B.1.525 strain poses.
“For the moment we do not know the variant’s power of infection nor its other characteristics,” Campania’s regional government said in a statement.
The more prevalent strain identified in the UK, B.1.1.7, now makes up 17.8 per cent of new COVID-19 cases in Italy on average, according to Italy’s top health agency, the ISS.
More than 500 cases have been publicly reported in Italy to date, mainly in Abruzzo and Lombardy.
Around 20 cases of the Brazilian variant have been confirmed, mostly in Umbria, while at least two cases of the South African strain are known so far.
The proliferation of new variants has spurred health officials to call for a new nationwide lockdown in Italy.
Several towns and provinces where the variants have been detected have declared their own local lockdowns in a bid to curb infection rates.
