Milan, Italy – Italy discovered its first COVID-19 infections a year ago. The outbreak led to the first nationwide blockade outside China and claimed more than 95,000 lives across the country. But, as CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay reports, it’s a very different story now.
Life slowly returned to normal, and the Italians took to the streets over the weekend – even in the north of the country, which was once the epicenter. coronavirus epidemic.
Beatrice just turned one and what year. Two weeks after she was born, her mother noticed a fever.
“Before, when my kids coughed, we weren’t immediately scared,” Marta Zaninoni’s mother told CBS News. “But now in our family, the cough is no longer just a cough. It’s really stressful.”
Beatrice had COVID-19 – the first known case in Europe of a newborn.
“They immediately put her in an incubator,” Zaninoni said. “I couldn’t even say goodbye.”
As her tiny body battled the disease in isolation, Beatrice became a symbol of hope for Bergamo’s home region of Bergamo.
Many followed her progress in the hospital, and the whole country would soon join Beatrice in isolation. The infections exploded, sinking cities, towns and then all of Italy into what was – for a free society – unimaginable: the blockade.
The death toll has risen, and as the disease has forced the military to turn into mortals and barns into makeshift morgues, it has robbed not only people’s lives but their dignity.
The iconic streets of Italy were uninhabited. Pope Francis even offered a solitary Easter service without precedent, practically. In small towns such as Nembro, which once had the highest mortality rate in the country, the Catholic Liturgy took place before the empty pews throughout 2020
But today, from Milan to Rome, life has returned. On Sunday, Nembro’s church was full.
“Last year we had 188 funerals,” Nembro priest Don Matteo Cella told Livesay. “People are planning weddings this year.”
The old traditions go back to all of Italy, but with some differences. A year ago, something as simple as drinking a cappuccino outdoors had become inconceivable.
Life is barely returning to normal; the law still requires you to wear a mask at all times in public, even outside, unless you eat or drink.
It is a slow recovery and not without victims – something that mother Beatrice knows for herself as a COVID survivor. The virus killed her uncle and grandfather while Beatrice was still in the hospital.
“They never met Beatrice,” Zaninoni cried, adding that the illness had brought the rest of the family closer than ever.
“Finally, after 40 days, Beatrice became without COVID on Easter day,” her mother recalled. “It was a real resurrection for us. Despite her death in Italy, Beatrice brought us life.”
A year later, Italians are now looking forward to vaccine doses.
Launch in the European Union has been slower than in the US Many 80-year-old Italians still do not know when they will receive the first blow – a special concern in a country with one of the oldest populations in the world.