First person: With coronavirus isolation in Italy, life in the ‘red zone’ is like science fiction

It was in late January that I first heard the word “coronavirus’. It was some kind of flu, I gathered, that was happening far away, to a large number of people in China. I skimmed through the news about Wuhan and cities in China being blocked off. Comfortably ensconced in the First World, I read this information with some amount of distance. In Italy, after all, we were too busy with fashion week and aperitivo, the daily routine of school-work-home, to really be concerned.

Until one Friday morning, when we woke up in Milan to news of the first Covid-19 case: a 38-year-old man who had reported to the emergency room in the town of Codogno with fever and respiratory problems. He had recently had dinner with a colleague who had just returned from China earlier in February. There are several things to note here: first, the coronavirus had actually entered Italy earlier, two people in Rome had tested positive, but had recovered and the virus hadn’t really spread. Second, it was my understanding that flights from China had been blocked for a while now so how did this gentleman manage to come back to Italy? It must then be this China-returned gentleman who brought the virus to our sunny peninsula. The notorious Patient Zero, as he came to be called. What happened next?

The Chinese in Italy were shunned immediately, their shops and restaurants lost business overnight, they were spat upon and sworn at. What everyone conveniently forgot was the fact that most of these Chinese people are in fact Italian citizens who were born in Italy and some have never even been to China. The irony was that doctors soon discovered that China-returned Patient Zero didn’t even have the virus. (They now believe that it wasn’t a Chinese or even an Italian who spread the virus in Italy and the rest of Europe, but a German.) But to get back to that Friday morning…

Mask shopping

What was particularly worrying about the news of this first case in northern Italy was that the patient was a healthy young man. He had played football earlier that week with his buddies and had an active social life. So why is he still in the ICU, in serious condition, the doctors doing all they can to save him? What will happen to his wife, who is eight months pregnant? Something stirred in me that morning, and I knew it was the start of something big. I sent my husband to buy masks right away, knowing they would soon go out of stock. He came back with two masks, complaining that each one cost 20 euros and we would never need them anyway.

That afternoon the news said that there were another five cases in the same area. My father-in-law, who had come over to play with his grandkids, reassured me that things were under control and that the hospitals were equipped to deal with such crises. The next day there were a 100 cases, a week later 1,000 and today, Italy has 7300+ cases with 3,400 concentrated in Lombardy alone. Hand sanitisers and masks couldn’t be found anywhere, when available they were priced exorbitantly at 100 euros. Schools and universities were shut for a week, then another week; cinemas, pubs, nightclubs and discos were shut down as were the museums , church services were cancelled, football matches were played without the presence of fans, and all group activities of any kind postponed or cancelled.

On Day 1, people in north Italy panicked and emptied out the supermarkets. People looked at you strangely if you sneezed in public. When my two-year-old daughter got fever, I was honestly afraid of telling anyone. Except at the doctor’s clinic, of course, where I was asked a series of questions about travel to China or the Italian red zone, and fever among the adults in the family, before I was allowed to enter wearing my new mask. My Facebook and Whatsapp groups were full of posts about the new restrictions in place and confusion about what we could and could not do. Could I take my toddlers to the playground or park? Was it okay to use the metro and buses? Was it okay to go on vacation? For every personal interpretation of a rule there was someone who flaunted the actual ones.

Today, March 9, at the end of week 2, the panic is no less. The government has just decided to quarantine the entire Lombardy area and 14 other provinces. We are all now in the “red zone”, blocked off from the rest of the world. In any case, several countries have already advised against travelling to and from Italy, including India. Schools remain closed, and parents who don’t have the option of working from home are struggling to find babysitters, struggling also with the strain of having to pay both school fees and full-time babysitters.

Everything is cancelled

I work from home and it’s not an easy task with two toddlers who demand constant attention and entertainment; while my husband, who works on events and fairs finds himself without work in Milan because everything has been cancelled. He managed a few jobs outside the city but now those too are over because of the restrictions on travelling outside the red zone. Restaurants and bars will function only from six-to-six, always maintaining a 1 metre distance between clients; without dinners and cocktail hour, it will not take long for many of these locales to pull down their shutters.

Museums, which had opened briefly last week, will be shut. Even the Pope gave his Sunday Angelus speech on video instead of from the balcony of the Vatican. Tourism, which Italy depends on, has taken a bad hit, with everyone cancelling their Tuscan and Roman vacations, and it looks like we are already in recession.

For those who are outside this situation, it might look like the measures are drastic; mass hysteria for an illness that seems to be no more than the flu. I’m no medical expert but it looks to me like Covid-19 has the capacity to do far more damage than the ordinary flu. If you’re young and healthy, you will hopefully get lucky and have no serious symptoms – but you probably passed on the virus to someone who has a weaker immune system, for whom the flu quickly migrates into a respiratory disease, and who may die if he/she isn’t saved in time.

My friends and family in India have been worried. Last, week I was no less worried for them as I read horrifying accounts of the Delhi riots. This week I panicked as I read about the latest Covid-19 cases in India. It began with a group of 21 Italian tourists from the town of Codogno (population 15,900) who left Italy for a tour of Delhi-Agra-Rajasthan the same day the first case was announced in Codogno. What were the odds?

I count my blessings every day that my family and I are safe and healthy, that we have nothing urgent lined up for the next few weeks, that we lead a reasonably isolated life. But life is certainly different for those who need to enter/leave the city daily on work, who depend on public transport, who have aged and ailing parents whom they can no longer risk hugging, in some cases not even meeting. Life is different for the university students who had their graduation ceremony online, or for the father who couldn’t enter the hospital to watch his wife give birth to their baby, or for the daughter who had to organise her mother’s funeral but couldn’t invite anyone.

And it is certainly different for those who are ailing for other reasons, who are now not only at greater risk, but also alone in the hospitals for visitors are no longer allowed. A friend spoke to me tearfully of her sister-in-law who is in the final stage of Alzheimer’s and must spend her last days alone in hospital without visitors, without recognising a single person around her. Another friend’s father spent a great deal of money travelling up to Milan from the south of Italy to get a tumor removed only to have his operation postponed – everyone is busy with the Covid-19 patients, and there are not enough of them, the hospitals are on the verge of collapse, making these drastic new measures necessary in order to contain the virus.

A black spot

We have been asked not to leave our homes unless necessary, not to leave the city and definitely not exit the “red zone”. You risk a fine and arrest if you are caught. I cannot pretend that it is not suffocating. Last night, there was a mad rush as people rushed to unite their families who were separated in different parts of the red zone and outside it. Today, there are queues outside supermarkets, which are letting in only small groups of people at a time, the sight alarmingly resonant of Wuhan and South Korea.

My mother is in India, her trip to Milan cancelled last minute, my sisters are in the US – both countries seemed safe zones once. Now I don’t know when I will see my family next. I can only hope that things get better in a few months, although it seems now that we are living in a science-fiction movie. Italy, once the ideal holiday destination with its churches and art, fashion and football, wine and pasta, is now the black spot on the map of Europe, a place to be avoided at all costs. How long will it take for the boot to get back its stride?

Neelini Sarkar is a freelance editor from India who lives in Milan.