The coronavirus epidemic shows no sign of stopping, but the number of people recovering is also growing. Let's look at how Italy and other countries around the world are responding.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself", said Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second president of the United States, the only one to have been re-elected three times and to have led his country out of the Second World War. Nearly a century has passed, and yet never as in these last few weeks have those words felt so relevant. The new coronavirus Sars-CoV-2, which causes the disease Covid-19, has spread exponentially across the world, infecting almost 100,000 people and killing more than three thousand. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the number of people recovering is also constantly growing, and that today more than 50,000 people have managed to defeat the virus.
One of the emblematic cases of recovery is that of Vietnam. The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the sixteen people infected in the country have recovered and have been discharged from hospital. This happened in the commune of Sơn Lôi, north-west of the capital Hanoi, which is home to more than ten thousand people and eleven of the country's cases. In mid-February, some residents began to fall ill with Covid-19, and the Ministry of Health promptly decided to place the commune in isolation for twenty days in order to contain the spread of the virus. The surrounding communes adopted extraordinary hygiene measures, proceeding with the disinfection of streets and homes.
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On Thursday 27 February, the Vietnamese government declared the sixteenth and final patient recovered — a 50-year-old man identified by the initials Nvv. The man had been infected by his 23-year-old daughter, who had recently returned from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the epidemic began. According to the WHO, the government's response was crucial in containing the crisis, which might otherwise have had a devastating impact on the community.
Italy too has found itself managing a situation never seen before. In the space of a couple of weeks, the country went from a handful of isolated cases in the Lodi area to more than three thousand infections nationwide and over fifty deaths, with ten municipalities placed in isolation. To halt the epidemic, the President of the Council of Ministers, Giuseppe Conte, signed a new decree placing Italy in quarantine: schools and universities are closed until 15 March, the football league is played behind closed doors for a month, and all crowded events have been postponed. According to the head of Civil Protection Angelo Borrelli, the regions are responding well to this moment of crisis, and it is also thanks to the measures adopted that nearly 300 people have managed to recover.
While some of the measures taken to contain the spread of the virus have in fact helped to curb infections, they have on the other hand fuelled a different epidemic — that of fear. In recent weeks, numerous cases of mass panic have been recorded in Italy: from supermarkets stormed by people stocking up on food, to queues outside pharmacies to buy face masks (which, it should be noted, are only useful for those who have contracted the virus), to outright attacks on doctors and healthcare workers. A twofold problem has therefore arisen: how to slow the spread of the virus without spreading panic?
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The answer has come directly from the cities. The first to react were businesses, which, where possible, organised alternative working arrangements such as smart working, agile working, from home. Schools and universities, faced with the closure of their premises, organised online lessons, and although some events have undoubtedly been cancelled, they have demonstrated that together it is possible to cope even with the most adverse situations.
For their part, mayors have put out messages of solidarity with the population. The video by Milan's mayor Beppe Sala, Milano non si ferma, went viral within hours, while the mayor of Padua, Sergio Giordani, wrote an open letter to his citizens: "This is certainly not the moment to lose heart; on the contrary, now is the time for the entire Padua community to stand united and act with rationality and common sense," it reads. "Let us remember that the first shield against the virus is each one of our civic sense. Alarmism is useless and harmful, and at this moment we must all work together."
There are 81 countries in the world where cases of Covid-19 have been recorded. China accounts for the vast majority of infections (more than eighty thousand) and is followed by South Korea and Italy. The situation in France and Germany is evolving in these very days, but for the time being both countries count around 300 infected. Argentina, Chile and Poland have reported their first cases on their territory, and in the United Kingdom, now at 87 infections, an increase is expected in the coming days.
In the United States confirmed cases number more than 130, many in the state of Washington, where nine of the eleven total deaths have occurred. California has decided to declare a state of emergency, joining Florida and the state of Washington, after recording its first death — a measure also taken by Los Angeles County. Iran has decided to temporarily release more than 54,000 detainees serving sentences of less than five years, in order to counter the spread of the virus in overcrowded prisons.
The numbers of those who have recovered are also growing in parallel, surpassing 50,000 worldwide: the majority are in China, followed by more than 700 in Iran and nearly 300 in Italy.
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The Sars-Cov-2 epidemic is not a phenomenon to be underestimated, and the measures adopted to contain it may seem extreme, but as immunologist Attilio Speciani told us, the important thing is to remain calm, because "if the tone is kept at this level, there will be more deaths from panic" than from coronavirus.