As some throw caution to the wind, Italians fear a second virus wave

Italy’s new-found sense of freedom from Covid-19 brings its own share of dangers, writes in Lazio

LAST Saturday at around midnight, the lungolago — the lakeside walkway in our Lazio village — was jammed with day trippers and visitors.

Courting couples, exhausted parents wheeling sleepless kids in the evening heat, people walking off the effects of a restaurant meal and family units of all ages enjoying a late-night ice cream — it made for a very crowded “pre-Covid” scene.

Social distancing was out, while, unusually, most people were not wearing masks. And there’s the first rub.

Italy’s Covid crisis is not over but the progress made thus far has inevitably induced some to be less than cautious. There is a feeling that Italy, the first European country to contract the pandemic, has handled it well. By UK and US standards, this is more than true — there have been no Cheltenhams and no government advice to drink disinfectant, even if that sets the bar pretty low.

However, the reality is that, as health minister Roberto Speranza put it to the Italian senate last week, “this game has not been won yet”. The current emergency anti-Covid legislation remains in place until the end of the month — and perhaps a lot longer.

Italy might be out of its most dramatic dark moment — those March days when 1,000 people were dying daily from Covid — yet the overall international scenario gives Italy plenty of reason to worry, he suggested. Despite its best efforts, the country now seems to be importing Covid-19.

As we move towards autumn, should Italy be concerned about a forthcoming perfect storm — a second wave generated by returning legal migrant workers, an increased summer trade in boat people trafficking and complacency from a small minority of Italians?

In particular, the discovery in the last fortnight that a significant percentage of both returning migrant workers and newly arrived boat people have tested Covid-19 positive has already generated social tensions. The most recent case concerns the small seaside resort of Amantea in Calabria, southern Italy, a place renowned for some of the finest beaches in all Italy.

Some 24 Bangladeshi boat people, who had been rescued at sea, were taken to be housed in Amantea last Saturday. When word got out that 13 of the 24 had tested positive, locals became distinctly restless, staging road blocks to protest about the presence of the Covid-infected Bangladeshis.

Police were initially forced to mount a 24-hour guard on the condominium housing the migrants. Last Tuesday, the interior ministry resolved the problem by moving them to a military hospital in Rome, presumably to avoid further friction.

A similar situation developed last month in Campania, the region around Naples. In the town of Mondragone, police had to guard five rundown apartment blocks on the edge of town that were home to about 700 seasonal farm workers from Bulgaria.

When 43 people in the complex tested positive, local authorities instigated a ‘red zone’ lockdown, refusing to allow anyone to enter or leave. Problem was that some of the Bulgarians, desperate to return to work, “slipped out”, causing confrontations with Mondragone locals, terrified that their previously Covid- free town would become infected. Soldiers, complete with machine guns, had to be summoned.

Calabria regional governor Jole Santelli told Sky Italia TG24 that she shared the protesters’ concerns. She is one of a number of local administrators who have called for migrants to be quarantined on boats moored offshore. Problem is that almost no suitable boats are available.

The notion that there are hordes of foreign workers wandering around the countryside with Covid was boosted by reports last week of a 51-year-old Bangladeshi man, arrested in Rome’s Termini train station on July 7. He had arrived in Italy on June 24 on a flight from Dhaka, and had immediately tested positive — but then ignored instructions to have himself hospitalised.

Over the next two weeks, he travelled around Italy by taxi, bus and train, from Rome to Emilia-Romagna and back — infecting who knows how many people. His travels came to an end when an alert railway policeman noted him coughing and spluttering in the station.

Mind you, it should be pointed out that Italians themselves, not just migrant workers, are capable of “importing” Covid back into Italy.

Last week, the governor of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, an administrator who has done very well in his handling of the pandemic, pronounced himself to be very “p**sed off ” with the story of a 64-year-old Vicenza-based businessman who recently contracted Covid after a business trip to Serbia and Bosnia.

‘As for a second wave in the autumn, no one can predict that’

Last month, this successful self-made man, along with three employees, spent four days in Serbia, where he also has a steel products factory. During the visit to his Serbian factory, he and his group encountered a local foreman who has since died of Covid.

When the businessman returned from Serbia, he did not feel well, so he had himself tested for Covid, resulting positive. At this point, however, thinking that it was something he could get over on his feet, he refused hospitalisation. Furthermore, he attended a series of business meetings and even a funeral.

His actions are believed to have infected five people, while a further 90 are under surveillance. The businessman himself is now in intensive care. The annoyed regional governor says this sort of irresponsible behaviour should be sanctioned with anything from a €5,000 fine to an 18-month prison sentence. Furthermore, he has met with health minister Speranza to call for compulsory hospitalisation.

Meanwhile, the minister is also worried about a number of infection “clusters” which have recently appeared out of nowhere in regions previously not heavily infected, such as Lazio, Tuscany and Friuli Venezia Giulia (Trieste). Many of these new clusters seem to have been imported.

Not surprisingly, last Thursday the Italian health ministry added Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia to the list of currently banned countries. If you have been in any of these places in the last 14 days, then you will not be allowed into Italy.

A final positive thought, however. In an online press conference with the resident foreign press in Italy last week, Professor Alberto Zangrillo, of the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, told us that, in his view, the Covid-19 infection in Italy has lost much of its killer power.

However, he did add, worryingly: “Sars Covid-19 continues to manifest all sorts of peculiarities. For example, people can contract it twice. As for a second wave in the autumn, no one can predict that with any certainty...”