CODOGNO, Italy (AP) – With wreath-laying ceremonies, tree plantations and church services, Italians marked a year on Sunday since their country experienced its first known COVID-19 death.
Cities in northern Italy were the first to be affected by the pandemic and closed, and residents paid tribute to the dead. Italy, with about 95,500 confirmed confirmed dead viruses, has the second highest pandemic figure in Europe after the United Kingdom. Experts say the virus has killed many others who have never been tested.
While the first wave of infections largely covered Lombardy and other northern regions, a second wave that began in the fall of 2020 took place across the country. The number of new coronavirus infections has remained stubborn, despite a series of restrictions on travel between regions and, in some cases, between cities. In addition, gyms, cinemas and theaters have been closed, and restaurants and bars must close early in the evening. There is a toque from 22:00 to 5:00 nationwide.
To date, Italy has confirmed 2.8 million cases.
He was in the hospital in the Lombard city of Codogno, where a doctor recognized what will go down in medical history as the first known case of COVID-19 in the West in a patient unrelated to the outbreak in Asia, where coronavirus infections initially appeared. . The diagnosis was made on the evening of February 20, 2020, in a 38-year-old, otherwise healthy, athletic man.
On Sunday, near the Red Cross office in Codogno, the governor of Lombardy and the mayor of the city participated in a unveiling ceremony of a monument for the victims of COVID-19. The memorial consists of three steel pillars, representing strength, community and starting from the beginning. A wreath was laid and the people of the city remained silent to honor the dead.
“Panic, total panic,” was how one of Codogno’s 15,000 residents, Rosaria Sanna, remembered on Sunday what she felt at first. And a year later, “I’m still scared because it’s not over yet.”
Some of her colleagues in the city lit candles during the Sunday morning Mass in the church of St. Blaise in Codogno.
The patient at Codogno Hospital survived after being transferred to another hospital and spending weeks on a respirator.
But it was in the northeastern city of Vo, in the neighboring region of Veneto, where the first known death of Italy’s COVID-19 was recorded on February 21, 2020.
At Vo’s memorial service, officials planted a tree. A plaque was installed, quoting a replica of the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo, whose works are widely studied by the nation’s schoolchildren. The inscription reads, “A man never dies if there is someone who remembers him.”
Italy’s first known fatality due to COVID-19 was a 77-year-old man, a retired rooftop who liked to play cards.
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