ITALY FLIGHTS FARCE
We had no idea we were meant to be self-isolating, say returning tourists in...
chaos and confusion reigned at British airports yesterday as passengers returning from Italy’s coronavirus epicentre said they had no idea they were meant to be self-isolating for two weeks.
Many said they were planning to return to work immediately – including an Uber driver and a delivery driver – because they ‘felt fine’ and wouldn’t be getting sick pay.
To add to the confusion, the Nhs’s coronavirus website was failing to tell the public yesterday they needed to self-isolate for a fortnight if they had just come back from Italy, the worst-hit EU country.
The site was only instructing people to stay at home if they had been in certain regions in the north, even though the Government advice was officially extended to all of Italy on Monday night.
Even those travellers who were planning to self-isolate for two weeks were taking trains and coaches to get home from the airport, where they could infect others.
The lack of awareness over the guidelines will raise questions over whether the Government is really doing enough to contain the coronavirus outbreak in the UK.
Latest figures show 382 patients in Britain have so far tested positive for the virus, an increase of 63 cases in the last 24 hours. a total of six patients have now died and the latest victim was a man in his early 80s who was being treated at Watford General hospital in hertfordshire.
Yesterday, Deputy chief Medical officer Dr Jenny harries predicted that cases would really begin to take off in the next fortnight. she said ‘many thousands of people’ would probably contract the disease, although she stressed that the majority would not need hospital treatment.
‘Within ten to 14 days we will be likely to advise people with symptoms to self-isolate and we are expecting that start of the peak [of coronavirus cases] to come during that period,’ she said.
‘We will see many thousands of people infected by coronavirus, that’s what we’re seeing in other countries, and the important thing for us is to make sure that we manage those infections.’
But at stansted airport in Essex there was little information telling passengers to self-isolate for two weeks. several travellers told the Mail they had only seen out-of-date posters saying they only needed to stay at home if they had been in the northern regions.
other countries have imposed far stricter measures and austria yesterday banned travellers from entering Italy unless they had a medical certificate.
spain cancelled all inbound flights from Italy and France, the Us and australia are carrying out temperature checks on passengers from Italy at airports.
The official advice from the Department of health is that anyone returning from Italy should self-isolate for two weeks at home, even if they don’t have any symptoms. But Danilo Riccardi, 51, who flew to stansted from Naples yesterday, will be returning to work today as a delivery driver. he said: ‘I’m a delivery driver so I have to deal with a lot of people but I can’t get sick pay if I don’t work.’ Francesco stabile, an Uber driver, said he had ‘no idea’ about the Government advice to self-isolate. he said he was keen to get back to work, adding: ‘I go to Italy every two weeks to visit my girlfriend. I am feeling well. I have nothing wrong with me.’ abraham Guzman, 24, who is from Mexico and flew in to stansted from Rome, said he had no intention of staying indoors for two weeks. Mr Guzman, who is on holiday with claudia Gonzales, 26, said: ‘We were in Rome for two days and now we’re here just for two days. We are staying with friends. We’re going to get on the train to our friends’ house now. I think it will be fine.’
Yesterday alone approximately 17 flights arrived from Italy to stansted from cities including Rome, Naples and Milan. The country has reported more than 10,000 cases – the second-highest after china – with 977 new infections in the last 24 hours alone. Last night a member of the commons’ health select committee, charlotte Leslie, questioned why the Government had not officially moved into the ‘delay’ phase of its planning. Ministers have insisted they are still in the ‘contain’ stage although they are expected to move to ‘delay’
later this week, which will likely lead to new advice for isolation for the elderly.
Mrs Leslie, the former Tory MP for Bristol North West, tweeted: ‘There is an issue here: last week at the select committee [Chief Medical Officer] Chris Whitty said we were entering the ‘delay’ stage. But now a week later is seems we are not. What has changed? Experts give advice, but politicians make decisions.’
Once the Government officially moves into the delay phase, they will publish new guidelines for the elderly and at-risk groups advising them to prepare to self-isolate if the epidemic takes hold.
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘Our advice could not be clearer – anyone returning from Italy should selfisolate as a precaution, even if they have no symptoms.’
BRITONS, brace yourselves. The scenes I have witnessed unfolding here in Italy could, sooner or later, be coming your way.
Soldiers and policemen patrolling the streets. Food stores with empty shelves and only three people allowed in at a time. Flights cancelled and police checks at railway stations to ensure your travel is absolutely necessary.
Too late, some say. Too much, say others. Whatever your take, as of yesterday, this was the reality for 60million people living in Italy.
The news reached us at a deserted restaurant in Florence, late Monday night. The owner came to tell us and the other table of diners that, as of now, the whole country was under lock-down.
Quarantine
This was the last supper she would be serving until . . . nobody knows when. No longer were the quarantine measures restricted to hotspot regions of the north. As of 10pm on Monday, we were all in this together.
The atmosphere changed immediately. Before, the coronavirus was something happening to others. Now it was affecting everyone.
Suddenly, you could imagine how it might have been in this restaurant during the war, when British soldiers begged the owner to make chicken curry and mango chutney to remind them of home (the dish is still proudly on the menu today).
As we left the restaurant, three off-duty soldiers with giant kit bags were heading to the station. Italy had entered a war footing.
At least we knew we would soon be leaving. Or so we thought. Then a text message arrived from British Airways, explaining our flight and all others in and out of the country were cancelled.
Then, yesterday afternoon, we learned that BritishAirways has cancelled all flights in and out of Italy until
April, as have Wizz Air and Jet2. So we are trapped, 1,000 miles from home.
But would Britain be any safer? According to professor Sergio Brusin of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control: ‘The UK is in the same situation Italy was two weeks ago.’
There are, of course, worse places to be than Italy in March. As Raimondo Gaitano, 37, trapped in Milan, said on Instagram last night: ‘In the war our ancestors were expected to fight. All we have to do is lie on the sofa for two weeks.’
We were able to borrow a car and flee to my mother-in-law’s holiday house in the country, where we plan to spend the next four weeks. A university academic we know forwarded us a World War II-style permit issued by the Interior Ministry that all citizens are obliged to show when stopped by the police, explaining the purpose of your journey.
We hurried to a supermarket to stock up on supplies. The shelves of tinned tomatoes were empty, people were piling bottles of olive oil and dry pasta into trolleys. At the butcher’s counter, we got his last three sausages.
At the check-out, yellow lines had been painted onto the floor at one-metre intervals, designating where each shopper had to wait until the customer in front had bagged up and gone. Arriving in the countryside, we were told in the local shop that as of today, nobody is allowed to leave their ‘commune’, or village.
That means we will now have to rely on a tiny village shop for everything.
We passed soldiers clustered around an army Land Rover in the high street, and had seen several more on the motorway. The scene is the same all over Italy. In Venice, where residents have been in lockdown for nearly two weeks, they fully support the quarantine, saying the sooner everybody does it, the sooner life can return to normal.
That’s the view taken by Gioele Romanelli, 47, a third generation hotelier who runs two hotels in Venice, the Novecento and Casa Flora. He has been running at 2 per cent occupancy and his last guests left yesterday, so he has closed both hotels indefinitely.
‘We are suffering a lot. We employ 30 people, our priority now is to ensure we can keep paying their wages,’ he says.
‘We have just come out of a very hard winter, in which tourism in Venice was massively down because of flooding. Now, normally we would be getting ready for the high season that begins in April and goes on to September. Instead we are closed. The only person we are keeping working is the booking office, so that they can handle all the cancellations.’
Sickness
But there is, he says, an upside. ‘Now that the tourists have gone, we feel safer than ever. And Venice has gone back to how it is supposed to be — calm and beautiful. We are using this time as an opportunity to appreciate the strange privilege we suddenly have of being in an empty Venice.’
John Voigtmann, an exrecord producer turned hotelier, has guaranteed staff at La Bandita in Tuscany that he will pay them for six months even though he has shut the hotel indefinitely.
‘It’s not clear that this cure isn’t worse than the sickness,’ he said in reference to the lockdown. ‘But now is not the time to dispute these measures. Now is the time to be patient, kind, generous and responsible. I am confident that Italy will set a dignified and effective standard for the rest of the world.’
Everywhere, churches, museums, shopping malls and football stadiums are all shut.
Wherever you go, you have to remain at least one metre away from the next person.
Bars and restaurants can only open from 6am to 6pm, as people may forget the rules once they’ve had an evening drink and get too close.
For now, everyone is obeying the policy. This is a country not known for its team spirit. But a new and unique mood has descended. There is an atmosphere of solidarity, of citizens prepared to do their duty.
Draconian
It is hard to imagine such draconian measures being taken in Britain, where the instinct to keep calm and carry on still — just — prevails. Today, it may seem like the Italians are behaving according to some melodramatic stereotype. But there is no doubt they had to.
Dr Daniele Macchini, an intensive care physician in Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital in Bergamo, talked in a Facebook post of a ‘tsunami’ that has ‘overwhelmed us’.
‘Cases are multiplying, with a rate of 15-20 admissions per day — all for the same reason.
The results of the swabs come one after the other: positive, positive, positive.
Suddenly emergency services are collapsing. Reasons for admission are always the same: fever and breathing difficulties, fever and cough, respiratory failure.
Radiology reports are always the same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia.’
Ventilators are like gold dust, he added. Operations have been suspended, and staff are exhausted. And yet, Italy has a sixth more hospital beds available than Britain.
As cases of coronavirus continue their relentless spread, could what I have seen in Italy provide a glimpse of Britain to come?