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VO, Italy (AP) – Italy delivered the first shocking confirmation of locally transmitted coronavirus infections outside Asia a year ago on Sunday, with consecutive revelations of cases more than 150 kilometers (nearly 100 miles) in the north of the country.
First, a 38-year-old man from Codogno, an industrial town in the Lombardy region, tested positive for COVID-19, sending panicked residents to pick up their children from school, stock up on groceries in the grocery stores and search in vain. surgical masks in pharmacies.
On the evening of February 21, a 77-year-old retired roofer from Vo, a wine town in the Veneto region, died – at the time, the first known death from a case of the virus transmitted locally in the West, ringing alarm bells in the distance
In the days and weeks that will follow, densely populated Lombardy will become the epicenter of the Italian epidemic, and by the end of March countries around the world will be on lockdown to slow the spread of the virus which has now cost the country life to 2.4 million lives. But Vo, as one of the first towns in the West to be isolated, has a unique history, providing some of the first scientific information on the deadly virus.
The death of Adriano Trevisan sent shock waves through the city west of Venice. Trevisan, well known around Vo and used to a game of cards at a local bar, had been hospitalized for two weeks with circulatory problems related to heart disease that could not be cured with medication, according to his doctor, Dr. Carlo Petruzzi. . There was no reason to suspect the coronavirus – as the retiree had had no contact with China, until then a key part of the diagnosis.
After being informed of the death, Mayor Giuliano Martini, who also serves as the city’s chief pharmacist, ordered schools and non-essential businesses to close and banned residents from leaving the city, even for work. He called on local volunteer groups to ensure that food and pharmaceuticals entering the city were routed to the shelves. The city’s three family doctors have been quarantined due to suspected contact and the nearest hospital, a 30-minute drive away, has been closed.
“It was like a war movie,” Martini said. “We were completely alone.”
Surrounded by vineyards and farmland, the town of 3,270 inhabitants nestled against Monte Venda has long enjoyed a bucolic isolation. But three days after Treviso’s death, his isolation was ensured by government decree: Rome dispatched soldiers to seal the city’s 12 access roads. Blockades have also been put in place around the 10 towns near Milan where the other early case of local transmission has been confirmed.
“There was a feeling of bewilderment, I would call it,” said Dr Luca Rossetto, one of the Vo practitioners. “Even I, with a former specialization in preventive hygiene, should have the right frame of mind. But there was absolute disorientation.
Rossetto reviewed his recent cases and realized that he had seen seven people in the previous days with pneumonia-like symptoms. A week later, the 69-year-old doctor himself was hospitalized with the virus, a mild case from which he recovered.
The governor of Veneto, Luca Zaia, meanwhile, instinctively ordered coverage tests for all residents of Vo, in a bid to understand the origin of the epidemic. That he was even able to make such a call was thanks to the foresight of the University of Padua virologist Andrea Crisanti, who had ordered the necessary tools after the virus appeared in China. Many places around the world have struggled to institute testing so quickly.
Crisanti acknowledged that it would be helpful to test the entire city immediately after contagion was confirmed, and then again after two weeks. And his work has helped shed light on how the virus spread – a clarity that Crisanti says was never properly translated into action.
The results of the first round of nasal swab tests, available on February 27, showed that nearly 3% of the population had been infected. This indicated that the virus had been circulating in the city since the end of January, according to Crisanti.
“With this data, we should have closed Veneto and Lombardy, immediately,” Crisanti said. But policymakers, he said, “failed to see the scale of the problem.”
The question of whether more traffic restrictions should have been instituted earlier has been hotly debated in Italy, with many politicians noting that such decisions were extremely difficult given that the measures come at a high economic and social cost and undermine to freedoms. There is even a criminal investigation into whether authorities have waited too long to lock down two towns in Lombardy.
Stopping Vo has been shown to be remarkably effective in stopping transmission. When Crisanti performed the second round of testing on March 7, no new cases were detected.
Crisanti said the results – which were published by the journal Nature in June but immediately known to Italian officials – made it clear that isolation and mass testing was the best way to contain the virus before vaccines.
While Crisanti managed to persuade the Veneto region to increase testing, it was not until March 9 – 17 days after the virus was detected simultaneously in two Italian regions, with cases multiplying and a mass exodus. to the south underway – what then – Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ordered the entire country a near-total lockdown that would last for seven weeks.
By the end of May, as cases began to decline in Italy, more than 232,684 people had been infected, mostly in the north, and 33,415 had died.
Scientists still don’t know how the virus got to Vo.
Although hit at the same time, Veneto fared much better than Lombardy, which became the epicenter of the two Italian pushes. It is half the population and its industry is more dispersed, but experts have also credited its health system, which allows close contact between family physicians, district administrators and hospital officials and is less dependent on institutions. private. Another key part of its fight against viruses was the testing system Crisanti created.
Crisanti urged the Rome government in August to expand its capacity for nasal swab testing in the hopes of keeping transmission low after a successful lockdown. Although the government has done so, Crisanti is disappointed that it has relied heavily on rapid testing – as many other places have done and as recommended by some experts – rather than strategically deploying more reliable nasal swabs. to isolate epidemics.
In October, Italy was battling a resurgence that proved to be even deadlier than the spring peak, with a toll now of nearly 95,000. New groups of a variant first discovered in Britain have led to localized lockdowns across the country, forcing the cancellation of one of the virus’s anniversary commemorations this weekend in Lombardy.
While the arrival of the virus last February caught the country off guard, the long-anticipated fall resurgence was “madness,” Crisanti said.
Vo has also suffered a resurgence that is only fading away. The city’s pandemic death toll has doubled to 6.
Boasting an unusually high number of restaurants per capita with 45 restaurants, Vo is now an echo of itself. Weddings, baptisms and first communions that drew residents of neighboring towns to the hillside town have been limited by restrictions. Restaurant closures also forced the Vo wine cooperative to cut production in 2020. The local dance hall never reopened.
Things could have been different, Martini thinks.
“The Vo virus arrived in Vo and died in Vo,” the mayor said of the first cases a year ago. Failure to repeat the pattern: “Ruinous,” he said.
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