'There is no one around, the streets are empty, it is almost scary. Supermarkets have been stormed.'
“It is the time for national unity, the situation should not be used for political gains,” is tirelessly repeated by Giuseppe Conte, the prime minister of the nation with the highest number of coronavirus cases outside of Asia and the highest in the West.
Over half of the people who had tested positive to the swab, do not need hospital treatment: they have no symptoms but they could become a “plague spreader” and have to stay quarantined. Based on Italian television and news reports however, it seems an apocalypse is approaching: supermarket shelves have been ransacked, half of Italy closed down museums, theatres and schools as a precautionary measure.
Public offices have been shut down, except those providing essential services, while some companies let staff work from home. Guarded quarantines have been imposed on individuals who had contact with confirmed cases. Life inside a red zone: A chemist wears a protective mask as she waits for customers in a pharmacy in San Fiorano, one of the towns on lockdown due to a coronavirus outbreak, in this picture taken by schoolteacher Marzio Toniolo in San Fiorano, Italy, February 25, 2020. The local mayor has paid for an apartment for the chemist, who did not give her name, as she chose to stay in the town to help instead of travel to Brescia with her family.
“Government decisions are political and based on the principle of social distance, the objective is curbing a substantial share of contacts between people. In these cases, there is no right recipe on which type of activity to close or not, the aim is reducing an excessive concentration of people so to reduce also the share of seriously ill people,” the professor told TRT World over the phone.
Unlike other European countries, at the end of January, Italy closed direct flights to and from China. Like China, Italy is now also being increasingly isolated from other countries: British Airways has drastically reduced its connections to Milan. Life inside a red zone: Lombardy civil protection officers wear protective masks outside the entrance of the town hall in San Fiorano, one of the towns on lockdown due to a coronavirus outbreak, in this picture taken by schoolteacher Marzio Toniolo in San Fiorano, Italy, February 24, 2020. Meanwhile, in many northern Italian cities, including Milan, fear has taken over the population. “Since the news of the first contagion came out, panic has spread among people. They wear masks and gloves.
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