Keep distance as Italy’s ‘kissing culture spreads coronavirus’
With more cases and deaths than anywhere else in Europe, Aine Fox and Victoria Jones look at why the coronavirus spread so quickly in Italy
ITALY’S total number of confirmed coronavirus cases has exceeded 12,000. As well as the country being placed in lockdown, the government has this week shut all shops except food shops and pharmacies.
It comes after the nation already closed schools, clubs, venues, gyms, and museums in a bid to halt the spread.
By yesterday, there were more than 12,000 cases, with 827 deaths from the virus. And of the 12,000 cases, 900 patients were in intensive care.
So how did Italy become the second-worst-affected country after China?
Coronavirus may have gone undetected in the country since late January.
The first person to test positive in the north of Italy and who had not been to China was confirmed to have coronavirus on February 21 – just three weeks ago.
By that stage the 38-year-old man had already infected his wife and several doctors, nurses and patients at the hospital he had attended with flu-like symptoms three days earlier.
Experts now think the virus may have been present and spreading in northern Italy since at least the second half of January.
Professor Massimo Galli, who specialises in infectious diseases at the University of Milan, told RTE: “Italy should be a warning to everybody, everywhere.
“We have an epidemic because of one person who returned with an infection in an asymptomatic phase and it spread underground in the ‘red zone.’”
The red zone refers to the Lombardy region, in the north of Italy, which has been hit the hardest by the virus.
Meanwhile, Dr Giovanni Rezza, head of infectious disease at the National Institutes of Health, has attributed Italy’s high death rate to the fact that the country has the world’s oldest population after Japan.
Most of those who have died are elderly with previous health issues.
For that very reason the high death rate is not surprising, said Professor Marina Della Giusta, from the department of economics at the University of Reading.
“The little we know so far of this virus is that it has much higher mortality rates for older people.
“At least that’s what the Chinese data suggests so far.
“Italy is the oldest country in Europe, probably, so that won’t be surprising.
“The demographic affected is way bigger than it would be in lots of other places.”
The spread is also thought to have been exacerbated because Italians generally enjoy the great outdoors and have a tactile culture, said Prof Della Giusta.
She said: “The interpersonal physical space in Italy is a lot shorter than it is in the UK. Their habit is to kiss each other when you say hello.
“There is higher physical contact anyway around the Mediterranean between people, and people are outdoors more at this time of year than they are in other parts of Europe, where it’s still a bit colder.”
Another reason for the rapid spread is because movement between regions did not stop when schools were shut.
Prof Della Giusta, who is originally from the Piedmont region in the north-west of the country, said many people did not take self-isolation measures very seriously when schools were first closed in northern regions a few weeks ago.
“When schools got shut in Lombardy a lot of people just took their kids and went off to their holiday homes in the mountains and at the seaside in the other regions.
“They thought they were making their kids safe by taking them away, but this kind of behaviour is really very damaging.”
Will the latest, more extreme measures work?
Some experts have described the country-wide lockdown as not only unprecedented, but also unsustainable.
Professor John Edmunds, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it will probably only have a short-term impact.
“If they can’t be sustained for the long term, all they are likely to do is delay the epidemic for a while,” he said.
But Prof Della Giusta said Italy’s current measures are “excellent” and “entirely appropriate”. She said the government had reacted too slowly initially.
So the question here remains, would a lockdown work for the UK?
Four days ago, Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said the UK had seen a much more gradual increase in numbers and the cases so far had not been concentrated in a single region, unlike the situation in Italy.
He added: “More rigorous social distancing measures are likely to be implemented in the UK over coming days or weeks as case numbers increase.
“But the timing of their introduction will be chosen to hopefully maximise the benefit whilst minimising the harm to British society.”