How overseas Chinese showed the way to beat virus

FLORENCE — In the storm of infection and death sweeping Italy, one big community stands out to health officials as remarkably unscathed — the 50,000 Chinese who live in the city of Prato.

Two months ago, the country’s Chinese residents were the butt of insults and violent attacks by people who feared they would spread the coronavirus through Italy.

But in the Tuscan city of Prato, home to Italy’s biggest single Chinese community, the opposite has been true. Once scapegoats, they are now held up by authorities as a model for early, strict adoption of infection-control measures.

“We Italians feared that the Chinese of Prato were to be the problem. Instead, they did much better than us,” said Renzo Berti, the top state health official for the area, which includes Florence.

“Among Chinese residents in Prato there isn’t even one case of COVID contagion,” he said, referring to COVID-19, which has killed more than 22,000 in Italy, more than in any other country except the United States.

Chinese make up about a quarter of Prato’s population, but Berti credits them with bringing down the entire city’s infection rate to almost half the Italian average — 62 cases per 100,000 inhabitants versus 115 for the country.

Italy, the most affected country in Europe, reported on Thursday that it has had 168,941 coronavirus cases and 22,170 deaths since the pandemic broke out in the country on Feb 21, according to the Civil Protection Department. The country is under a national lockdown, which went into effect on March 10 and has been extended to May 3.

Prato’s Chinese community, built originally around the textile industry, went into its own lockdown from the end of January, three weeks before Italy’s first recorded infection.

Many were returning from new year holidays in China. They knew what was coming and spread the word: Stay home.

So as Italians headed to the ski slopes and crowded into cafes and bars as normal, the Chinese inhabitants of Prato had seemingly disappeared. Its streets, still festooned with Chinese New Year decorations, were semi-deserted with shops shuttered.

There is some anecdotal evidence that Chinese people elsewhere in Italy took similar precautions, though national data on infection rates among the community is unavailable. The health ministry did not respond to an email seeking comment.

When Chinese-born businessman Luca Zhou, 56, flew home from China on Feb 4 to rejoin his wife and 28-year-old son in Prato, he put himself straight into quarantine in his bedroom for 14 days, separated from his wife and son.

“We had seen what was happening in China and we were afraid for ourselves, our families and our friends,” said Zhou, who has a business exporting Italian wine to China.

After emerging from his self-quarantine, he ventured outside in mask and gloves. He said the few other Chinese on the streets also wore them.

“My Italian friends looked at me oddly. I tried many times to explain to them that they should wear them, ... but they didn’t understand,” Luca said.