CODOGNO, Italy (AP) – With wreath-laying ceremonies, tree plantations and religious services, Italians on Sunday celebrated one year since their country experienced the first known death of COVID-19.
The cities of northern Italy were the first to be affected by the pandemic and closed, and residents paid tribute to the dead. Italy, with some 95,500 confirmed viruses killed, has the second highest number of pandemics in Europe after Britain. Experts say the virus also killed many others that were never tested.
Although the first wave of infections largely flooded Lombardy and other northern regions, a second increase from the autumn of 2020 has spread across the country. The number of new coronavirus infections has remained stubbornly high despite a number 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 in the early evening. There is a curfew across the country from 10pm to 5am.
So far, Italy has confirmed 2.8 million cases.
It was at the hospital in the Lombard city of Codogno where a doctor recognized what would 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 they initially arose coronavirus infections. . The diagnosis was made on the evening of February 20, 2020 in an athletic, anyway, healthy, 38-year-old man.
On Sunday, near the Red Cross office in Codogno, the governor of Lombardy and the mayor of the city attended a ceremony to unveil a monument to the victims of COVID-19. The memorial consists of three steel pillars, which represent resilience, community, and the beginning again. A wreath was laid and the inhabitants of the city remained silent to honor the dead.
“Panic, total panic,” was how on Sunday one of Codogno’s 15,000 residents, Rosaria Sanna, recalled what she felt at first. And a year later “I’m still scared because it’s not over yet.”
Some of his fellow citizens lit candles during Sunday morning masses in the church of San Blai de Codogno.
The Codogno hospital patient survived after being taken to another hospital and spending weeks with a respirator.
But it was in the northeastern city of Vo, in the neighboring Veneto region, where Italy’s first known death of COVID-19 was recorded on February 21, 2020.
At the Vo memorial ceremony, officials planted a tree. A plaque has been installed that cites a line by the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo, whose works are widely studied by schoolchildren in the country. The inscription reads, “A man never dies if someone remembers him.”
The first known fatality in Italy for COVID-19 was a 77-year-old man from Vo, a retired rooftop who liked to play cards.
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