All Of Italy Is Now On Coronavirus Lockdown/"Stay or go"?

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Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced Monday that coronavirus lockdown measures were being extended to the entire country, with travel to be restricted to reasons of work, health, and emergencies. The measures would become effective Tuesday and last until April 3, he said.

Public transport would continue to run, Conte said, in order to allow people to get to work. But people would have to explain why they were traveling, and any movements and gatherings outside those permitted would not be allowed. Schools and universities will also remain closed as part of the measures.

The motto is that people should stay at home, Conte said.

The prime minister also announced that all sporting events, including Serie A, the country’s top soccer league, were suspended.

All public gatherings will be banned, sports events including football matches are suspended, and movement is being severely restricted across the nation in a bid to contain COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus.

The national lockdown extends measures that had previously only been in place in the country's north.

Inmates on the roof of the San Vittore Prison, Milan

“Milan carries on,” the mayor of Italy’s fashion and finance capital defiantly tweeted just 11 days ago. Despite the budding coronavirus outbreak, Beppe Sala’s tweet included a video showing people hugging, eating out, sitting in cinemas, and just going about their lives.

On Monday, the city was in lockdown, with restrictions imposed on social gatherings, bars, clubs, and restaurants, as well as limiting travel to and from the area.

Sala’s tune on Twitter changed quickly. "Only by not minimising the situation,” he said, “can it be overcome."

This quick turn of events in Italy’s iconic northern city, home to millions, and across the country, shows how governments around the world are struggling to contain the fast-moving virus.

People in Milan who are now subject to the lockdown want to know if the Italian government and regional and local authorities should have acted faster. "It's clear that Milan does stop," Daniele Costenaro, who works for Amazon in the city, told BuzzFeed News. "It's surreal that in two weeks we've gone from a handful of cases in a barely known town [Codogno] to the entire city of Milan in lockdown.”

Italy’s central government faced widespread criticism and chaos over the weekend when the lockdown measures for Milan, the Lombardy region, and 14 provinces in the worst-hit regions in northern Italy — in all an area covering some 16 million people — first emerged. At this point, the number of people testing positive for coronavirus soared past 8,000.

Draft proposals were leaked to the press Saturday evening, prompting thousands of panicked people to flee south, while millions of others were left scratching their heads, awaiting answers to basic questions, such as whether they would be able to go to work.

There were no official announcements until the early hours Sunday morning, when Conte faced reporters at a hastily organized press conference.

The rollout of the measures has exposed the government's struggles to communicate effectively since the initial cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, were first reported in January. "It's disturbing,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, the cofounder of the market research agency Quorum, told BuzzFeed News. "If you look at what the experts were saying back then, it was immediately clear that coronavirus was a very serious matter."

“The whole episode is symptomatic of a short circuit between politics, communications, and conflicting information that has jumped between alarmism and minimization," said Pregliasco, who lives in Turin.

"'Milano doesn't stop' just pandered to the city's gut and instincts," Pregliasco said. He described the campaign as “dangerous” and “irresponsible.”

"It generated great risk and damage. I hope it'll end up just being embarrassing, and nothing more than that. Contradictory and minimizing messages are incredibly confusing and risk lives — and this for someone who is in charge of a major city is unforgivable," Pregliasco added. "On Saturday, people literally didn't know if they could return home, see their family, and so on. You had a surreal situation of alarm."

The rollout of the measures has exposed the government's struggles to communicate effectively since the initial cases of COVID-19 were first reported in January.

"The government was anxious to not spread panic and has moved a little awkwardly. On the one hand, they took a 'wait and see' approach to maintain the impression of life carrying on as normal and then realized too late that it wasn't possible,” Costenaro said.

"The new normal is that my wife and I wake up and work from home on our laptops," he said, "but I think about all those people who get up in the morning and need to deliver shopping to people like me. Or riders and other delivery services who are at risk with each door they knock on."

Others in the north of Italy have mixed views on the government’s performance.

Luigi Curini, a university professor in Milan, told BuzzFeed News: "There has been improvisation from the onset. The initial reaction was to minimize. And then faced with reality, there has been an overshooting at the other end."

Some are more sympathetic, as this is the biggest public health crisis the country has faced in recent years. Carlene Berry Yağmurlu, an English teacher from Newcastle who has lived in Milan for the best part of the past 10 years, said, "I think they are taking drastic measures, but it is really necessary. I think they should have done it weeks ago actually.”

And Flavio Mondello Malvestiti, a 31-year old consultant, said, "They were unprepared, but I honestly believe they are genuinely doing everything that is possible.”

Still, Mondello Malvestiti said the communication could have been better.

“What the government (I include local authorities and municipalities) did wrong in my view, is to send mixed messages. They did not provide a shared point of view on the seriousness of the situation. It’s not possible to have a mayor who calls for openness and normal life and the health secretary who says this is much worse than the seasonal flu,” Mondello Malvestiti said. “The government should have been clearer on its objectives and potential actions from the very beginning.”

Inside the area affected by the lockdown, some residents have been left confused by what the measures — which include restrictions on movements to and from the affected areas except for urgent travel — actually mean for everyday life.

Lorenzo Newman, who is involved with a number of nonprofits in Milan, told BuzzFeed News he feels like “every day there is a new rule, and it usually contradicts what we were asked to do previously. We’ve been told we mustn’t hug and kiss … But then why are they letting us still use public transport, which is possibly even riskier behavior? And why have they quarantined all of Lombardy without a plan to enforce travel restriction measures?”

“Thousands of potentially infected southerners fled Milan overnight the moment the measure was announced, likely spreading the virus to the south,” he added.

Military police check documents at a 'red zone' checkpoint in San Fiorano, southeast of Milan

But despite the frustration, most residents who spoke to BuzzFeed News agreed stringent measures were needed and hope people will follow the rules.

Christina Hambi, an English digital project manager who has lived in Milan for several years, said her concern is “people need to stay in the house — not because they’ll catch the virus and die, but to stop spreading it."

That may not be so easy, Mondello Malvestiti said. “Probably for true Milanese, it’s quite difficult not to go for an aperitivo, and that’s why you can still see people pouring into restaurants and bars, completely ignoring safety advice.”

“Hopefully,” he added, “they won’t be able to do that anymore as of yesterday.”

Overall, the immediate impact of the restrictions is not as dire as the dramatic images on social media of empty supermarket shelves and packed trains. The government itself has said that the measures do not amount to “absolute prohibition” on movements.

"No one’s locked in your house. I went to the park yesterday and I exercised and there were 150 people there exercising because they can’t go to the gym," Hambi said. “The supermarkets are open and they’re not empty by any means, they’re full of food, they’re full of toilet paper.”

"You don’t feel isolated from the world but it disrupts your daily life,” she said. “Even trivial things — you can’t get a pedicure.”

"There are two types of people: the apathetic people and the ‘buy all the hand gel’ people," Hambi said. But she is worried about the lasting impact of this crisis on jobs, the Italian economy, and their way of life: "The shockwave of that is going to last longer than the period of coronavirus."

Stay or go? Tough call for Chinese in Italy as coronavirus crisis hits

Business in Italy has taken a hit from the coronavirus. Photo: EPA-EFE

Thousands of migrants from China’s eastern seaboard are questioning their future in the euro zone’s third-biggest economy as Covid-19 takes hold. Business is taking a battering and some wonder if they are welcome.

Wenzhou and Rome may be 9,300km (5,800 miles) apart but public anxiety about the coronavirus is the same in both places.

This is especially true for the thousands of businesspeople from the eastern Chinese coastal city, who have moved to the Italian capital in the last few decades and established one of the biggest Chinese communities in the country.

About 100,000 people from Wenzhou, and another 100,000 from nearby Qingtian county, live in Italy, according to official Chinese data, with Milan also hosting a sizable Chinese community.

But many are considering their short and long-term future as Italy reels from the coronavirus epidemic, which has killed more than 100 people and infected roughly 3,100 in the European country.

Wu Yue, a businessman from Fujian province who has lived in Rome for 20 years, said many Chinese in Italy were anxious and wondering if they should return home.

“We definitely feel safer in China. The government is more efficient … Hospitals here can treat patients well, but the government’s ability to respond to an emergency is not ideal,” Wu said.

Business is deteriorating in the euro zone’s third-biggest economy as the government tries to curb the spread of the coronavirus by shutting down schools and universities across the country and sealing off a dozen towns in northern Italy.

Tourists wear protective masks in St Peter's Square at the Vatican

Italy has acted faster than other European countries in introducing public health measures, such as stopping all flights to and from China, although that was not fast enough to prevent the virus from reaching Italy.

On Wednesday, a study conducted by the University of Milan and Sacco Hospital confirmed that the coronavirus had been circulating in Italy several weeks before it first was detected there.

Despite the flight ban, which China urged Italy to lift, it is still possible for Chinese tourists and businesspeople to return to China, by flying first to other European or international airports, and taking routes onward from there.

Wu said he heard that some Chinese had chartered flights back to China or transited through Russia or Finland.

“I thought about sending my wife and kids back, but I decided against it because of the risk [of being infected] during the 17-hour journey,” he said.

A Chinese student in Milan, who would only give her surname as Liang, said many of her fellow students had returned to China, but she decided to stay.

“I am lucky as I work part-time in a professional field, so I still get paid,” she said. “But some of my classmates work in restaurants that can’t keep them on because business is bad, so they just went home for the time being.”

For those who did go back to China, the next question is when to return to Italy.

Chen Guangzhen has been stuck in Yongjia county in Wenzhou since he returned to China in December.

When the number of new coronavirus cases finally levelled off in Wenzhou, one of the worst-hit Chinese cities outside the epicentre of Hubei province, Chen prepared to return to Italy to run his grocery store near Rome.

Then things started worsening in Italy, forcing him to postpone his return again.

“I had booked a flight back on Sunday, but now I have to cancel it,” he said.

“As far as I know none of the Yongjia people in Italy have returned [to China] recently. We’re now encouraging them not to come back. After all, it’s riskier on the road than staying at home.”

A bigger fear for the Chinese diaspora, though, is whether they still feel welcome amid sporadic racist incidents and remarks as some in Italy see China as the source of their suffering.

Luca Zaia, governor of the Veneto region – one of the three hardest-hit areas of northern Italy – was forced to apologise after he said on television last month that “it is a cultural fact that China has paid a big price for this epidemic because we have seen them all eat mice live or things like that”.

Source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com,

by Alberto Nardelli,Joey D'Urso, and Hannah Al-Othman;

https://www.scmp.com, by Stuart Lau and Mandy Zuo in Shanghai；

https://news.sky.com