The 78-year old from the Veneto region who had tested positive for the virus died in hospital, where he had been admitted 10 days earlier for an unrelated health issue, Italy's health minister said.
Adriano Trevisan was a retired bricklayer and one of two people with the disease in the region, while 15 other people were discovered to have caught the virus in Lombardy, which took immediate measures to isolate affected areas.
Trevisan, from the village of Vo' Euganeo near Padua, had been diagnosed with the virus on an initial test, but the definitive results were still outstanding.