Coronavirus brings solemn sense of sacrifice and isolation as Italy warily recalls plagues of ages past
IN THE rash of quarantined towns across Lombardy, not even the cats are out. As Italy rushes to contain the coronavirus, 50,000 people are under lockdown, armed police patrolling eerie streets, operating multiple road-blocks preventing access or exit. No vehicles are allowed other than those of medical personnel and the forces of law and order.
No trains are stopping at the stations; schools, universities, businesses, museums are closed. On the streets, electronic signs flash warnings to people not to leave their homes, by health order of the government.
In wider Northern Italy, well beyond the quarantine zones, panic buying has taken hold, with supermarkets fast selling out of essentials. Anxious, masked shoppers line up with their trolleys, then slip off home, hunker down, wait for the storm of Covid 19 to pass.
All hoping their town, their city won’t be next into lockdown.
And these major shut-downs are not confined to thriving Lombardy. Schools and universities are closed across Liguria, Emilia Romagna, Piedmont, Alto Adige and Veneto. Milan closed all its schools and public offices.
Even the two national religions of football and fashion have not been spared in the efforts to stop the disease’s spread. Serie A matches are cancelled and on the last day of Milan Fashion Week, Giorgio Armani showed his new collection in sequestration. In Venice, the Carnevale was denied its spectacular finale.
Deaths
Italian media is alight with the “mystery” of the infection rate in the North, exploding from three cases on Friday to 219 yesterday, with seven deaths recorded. The “hunt” for Patient Zero continues in Lombardy since the person believed to be the initial carrier was found on testing to be virus free.
There are two hypotheses on Patient Zero’s identity, with hope they might have cleared the infection and are already recovered. However, not knowing their identity and their whereabouts and contacts means that despite the dramatic quarantine imposed by the government, infections are expected to rise further.
Globally, Italy has the third-highest level of infection after China and South Korea. Consequently, virologists and epidemiologists are advising Italians to avoid crowds and unnecessary travel on planes, trains, buses.
Practising meticulous hand hygiene is a must. Handrails and handles should be touched only with tissue, to be discarded immediately. Alcohol rub should be carried and used frequently. In the supermarkets, the favourite brand of handwash Amuchina is sold out. There are reports of its rocketing in price.
In addition, cross-border rail travel could be restricted, with the Austrian government considering controls on its frontier with Italy.
While, the alert is high nationally, in Florence and Prato with their significant Chinese population, the health authority ASL is monitoring 161 families who travelled back to Italy after the New Year.
So far, there are no reported cases of Covid 19 in the Tuscan province and Florence has been at pains to stamp out racist harassment of Chinese residents, with mayor Dario Nardella deploring the actions of the few. Italian President Sergio Mattarella paid a surprise visit to a primary school in Rome with a high proportion of Chinese pupils to show his solidarity.
In Florence, they’re keeping a weather-eye on the north. It’s not lost on Florentines that it was German imperial troops stationed in Lombardy who brought the plague to their city in the 1600s.
With no reported cases, they are still more bemused than angry at the lack of protective masks available to them, since city entrepreneurs gifted 250,000 of them to the people of China.
But it’s a city accustomed to infection and quarantine. When my son was looking for an apartment there, he found one in an ancient lazzaretto, a small hospital where Plague victims were treated. In this case, the Black Death.
Committed to those buildings, people would die or rise like Lazarus. Hence lazzaretto. As a phenomenon it’s still alive in the Italian consciousness. Last week Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte reassured the public his government would not be inflicting containment measures that were disproportionate, adding: “We will not make Italy into a lazzaretto.”
Historically, in times of crisis such as war or plague or famine, Italians took their miracle-working Madonnas from their jewelled glass cases, paraded them in gold and silver, silk and velvet, shoulder high through their towns and cities in acts of defiance and desperation.
I don’t know if the present day Lombards possess such a Madonna, but perhaps when their quarantine is over, the virus contained, public thanks of this or other sort will be given. Even today in the Florentine church of Santissima Annunziata with its own miracle Madonna, there is a bank of candles marked Per Italia where locals can light a candle for their country. In these days, I can imagine it being ablaze.
Miracle
Though probably not as much as in the year after the worst of the Black Death, 1349, when according to historian Monsignor Timothy Verdon desperate people bought a monthly average of 77,075 candles from the Confraternity at Orsanmichele to burn before its own miracle-working Mary.
Today, Martedi Grasso (Fat Tuesday) is a big day in Italy. Carnevale has been running all month, cities en fête, with children carrying huge bags of confetti to throw at passers-by, a modern take on the old custom of sprinkling them with ashes signifying death, decay.
Tonight, at midnight, the bells of Italian churches will toll slowly, solemnly, signifying the end of the feasting of
Carnevale and the beginning of the fasting of Lent.
It’s an electrifying experience to listen to the sound of the bells drifting across a city and to think of all the people in all the centuries who did and will do the same.
For now though, Italy is taking things by the hour, the test, the case. Virologist Professor Roberto Burioni is again repeating his advice that the only way to contain the virus is to demand quarantine for anyone travelling from China.
He points to “calming” statements made by politicians and asks now that they work together to address the crisis, since “the virus is not left or right or centre but altogether democratic”.
The proverbial ring of steel is wrapped around the quarantine zone. Quarantine comes from quaranta – the 40 days ships had to wait offshore before unloading goods and crew in the time of the Black Death. Tomorrow Lent begins. Quaresima in Italian. Another 40 days.
In containing the virus, Prof Burioni talks of “the need for sacrifice”.
There’s something in it.