THE HARDEST COVID-19 OUTBREAK IN THE WORLD

        The Italian region of Lombardy has introduced stricter measures in a bid to tackle the spread of Coronavirus, under the new rules announced late on Saturday, sport and physical activity outside, even individually, is banned. Using vending machines is forbidden, the move comes as Italy reported nearly 800 Coronavirus deaths on Saturday March 21 and saw its toll for the past month reach 4,825 as the highest in the world, deaths from COVID-19 have exceeded those reported in china, Lombardy is the worst affected region in the country with 3,095 deaths, the region's President Attilio Fontana announced the new measures in a statement, Business have been asked to close all operations excluding essential supply chains, work on building sites will be stopped apart from those working on hospitals, roads and railways, all open air weekly markets have been suspended. Across Italy there have been 53,578 total cases to date with about 6,000 people having recovered, Lombardy has been under a lock down since 8 March and the government had hoped to see results there first. On Saturday, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ordered the closure of all non essential businesses in the country, however he did not specify which businesses would be considered essential, supermarkets, pharmacies, post offices and banks will remain open and public transport will continue to run, during a television address to the nation, he said "we will slow down the country's productive engine but we will not stop it" Mr Conte described the situation as the most difficult crisis in our post war period. Milan the Lombard Capital is the beating heart of the Italian economy, home to the stock exchange, Italian business success stories such as Unicredit, Versace and Pirelli, outposts of overseas financial institutions, multinationals, law firms and consultancy giants. Despite the measures introduced so far, the number of new cases and deaths has continued to grow.
Soldiers were being drafted in to help enforce the lock down in Italy as officials announced the largest single day toll anywhere in the world since the Coronavirus outbreak began, desperate scenes have unfolded in the north of the country, the hard hit region where infections first exploded last month, as hospitals struggle to treat thousands of cases and Chinese medical experts helping Italy deal with the crisis have said the restrictions imposed in Lombardy are not strict enough, specialist doctors and medical equipment have landed in Italy to help tackling the sharp spike in people with the epidemic which has overwhelmed medical facilities, those doctors bring with them first hand experience of dealing with the Coronavirus, having previously helped to tackle the original outbreak in China's Hubei province that killed 3,261 people to date, tough quarantine measures have seen the rate of new cases in China decrease while in Europe the outbreak continues to spread, Italian Minister Luigi Di Maio announced that the Italian doctors don't need anyone to teach them their job but the Chinese doctors were the first to treat the virus and they can bring their experience. The government has now agreed that the military can be used to help enforce the lock down, the request to use the army has been accepted and 114 soldiers will be on the ground throughout Lombardy, it is still too little but it is positive, unfortunately we are not seeing a change of turned in the numbers which are rising, the soldiers had until now been deployed in the region to ensure general security in the streets.
Daniela Confalonieri, an Italian nurse in Milan said the situation was so dire that the dead were no longer being counted, we are working in a state of very high stress and tension, unfortunately we can't contain the situation because there's a high level of contagion, it's unimaginable, a hospital doctor in Bergamo, another Lombardy city, it had been hit so hard by the Coronavirus that it is now sending patients who need intensive care to other parts of the country because hospitals ran out of space, Bergamo's Mayor on Thursday announced plans to build a field hospital in the city to help manage the situation, Italian Doctors hope for a sign the Coronavirus lock down is working because there's no plan B, one of them in the Lombardy city of Cremona, Romano paolucci told that he had seen lot of dead that he never seen in his life and that medical staff were battling to cope with a lack of equipment long hours and increasing sickness withing their own ranks, he would say that they are at the end of their strength because it's just a small hospital that is taking lot of people unfortunately the capacity is finished, without no sufficient resources and especially staff because apart from everything else now the staff are beginning to get sick or even dead, one of the latest Italian deaths is 57 year old doctor Marcello Natali, Regional Chief of the Federation of General Practitioners who repeatedly sounded the alarm about Italy's failing response to the crisis in media interviews "We were not prepared for Coronavirus" Natali told in one of his last interviews he gave before his death, he warned about the lack of medical supplies available for fighting the Coronavirus which is highly contagious the main issue of increasing concern in the United States as well, while treating patients he couldn't wear gloves because there were not enough to go around, they have run out of gloves, after developing double pneumonia, Dr Natali was transferred to a hospital in Milan, it is unclear exactly when he tested positive for the Coronavirus, he died on Wednesday officials from the federation confirmed. To avoid COVID-19 disaster doctors in Italy start treating more patients at home, physicians at the epicenter outbreak issued a plea to the rest of the world on Saturday beyond the heartbreaking reports of overwhelmed health care workers and a seemingly uncontrollable death toll to warn that medical practice during a pandemic may need to be turned on its head, with care delivered to many patients at home. Western health care systems have been built around the concept of patient centered care but a pandemic requires community centered care, Said Physicians Mirco Nacoti, Luca Longhi and their colleagues at Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, the experience of the local doctors is crucial because some of the mistakes that happened in Italy can happen in any other country, although the hospital is a new state of the art facility, its 48 intensive care beds and other advanced treatment capacity have staggered under the COVID-19 caseload.
"I don't think it's really hit me yet" says Maria Vittoria Flachetti who works for her family's firm in the northern Italian town of Codogno, her father Umberto, founder of a car components Business, has become one of the casualties, the 86-year-old died in hospital from the virus, with the isolation rules not allowing his family to be with him “I’m still in quarantine and working from home but I dread the day when I go back to the office. My office is next to his, he kept this little purse in his drawer and I used to hear every time he took out some coins I knew he was going to get a coffee from the machine, I will miss that noise” she says. The lack of noise can be deafening, quiet streets, empty public transport, bars and restaurants that have closed, self-isolating families and locked down cities have become part of the strange days of this Covid-19 pandemic, private grief such as Maria Falchetti’s comes as public life seems to be falling apart, if the world is holding its breath to see what happens next is a microcosm of how the virus can overrun a community and how that community can fight back. One month ago, when coronavirus was first detected in the town, even the idea of locked down towns guarded by police checkpoints would have seemed like something from a paranoid disaster movie, two days after the outbreak was confirmed in Codogno, everyday modern, globalized 21st Century life in the town had come to a halt from being a 1,000 year old town with cafes and old churches, it became the place where “patient one” the person at the start of a chain of contagion was infected. People accustomed to going wherever they wanted found themselves ordered to stay behind a new frontier, they had become mask wearing residents of a quarantined “red zone”, a firewall to stop the disease, one of the most surprising things was how quickly people adapted, says Roberto Cighetti, a science teacher in the town “The priorities become clear food, health, family that’s it, you adapt in a moment” he says. If Italy’s journey into Covid-19 is a few weeks in front of the UK’s there are clues about the road ahead, Cighetti says panic buying was one of the first social symptoms of the epidemic “It’s difficult to behave well under pressure” he says, what stopped people hoarding food was when the supermarkets demonstrated there was no shortage by constantly and visibly re-stocking shops, once people were confident there were no problems with the food supply, the “panicking behavior” The next social challenge was an eruption of fake news, Whats-App groups were pinging with the spread of hoaxes, false cures and conspiracy theories “There is an instinct to spread news without verifying it, so there were rumors that were totally fake” says the science teacher “They created anxiety and panic and lowered the level of trust” Cighetti was so worried that misinformation was disrupting authentic public health advice that he took to social media with other scientists to try to counter the fake facts. Local people have suffered from an “epidemic of information” he says, both useful and fake, that might be a by product of another unwanted piece of history about this outbreak as epidemiologist Professor David Heymann says, this is the first time that we’re within a pandemic that “we can follow in real time” There was also the social distancing to get used to and that could have its own psychological isolation, says Cighetti “The distance translates into an emotional distance”

The coronavirus has shown how vulnerable and fragile our interconnected world can suddenly become but the same modern communications are keeping people together, there have been remarkable online eruptions of solidarity, Italy has had its own instant festivals of singing and music from balconies, with an opera singer delivering Puccini over the rooftops of Florence like some kind of epic soundtrack. Italians have also taken to raising an online glass to the friends they can’t see in person, the “aperitivo” after work drink has switched to Instagram, people stuck inside their homes are opening their windows for synchronized night time rounds of applause for medical workers, this clapping and cheering, echoing around the empty streets, comes from thousands of people who are separated and together at the same time. If the Italian experience is any guide, there will be mood changes in public responses to the Coronavirus, with the seriousness not necessarily evident at first, at the start of Codogno’s strange new life of the lock down, Cighetti says it felt like a “boring holiday” there were even positive sides in the red zone, apart from those who were ill or self isolating, people could move within the town and the enforced break meant “families spending more time together, walking, cycling, walking the dog, baking cakes” Pupils missed being at school and the science teacher says that when they had online lessons children actually seemed more engaged than usual, appreciating the return of normality but Covid-19 was stalking the town and the rise in deaths and illnesses meant the atmosphere changed from complaining about disruptions to work and cancelled trips to something much darker.