VO, Italy (AP) – Italy delivered on Sunday a year ago the first shocking confirmation of locally transmitted coronavirus infections outside of Asia, with consecutive case revelations more than 150 kilometers (nearly 100 miles) north of the country.
First, a 38-year-old man in Codogno, an industrial town in the Lombardy region, tested positive for COVID-19, sending panicked residents to pick up school children, storing supplies at grocery stores and looking in vain for surgical masks in pharmacies.
On the evening of February 21, a 77-year-old rooftop roofer in Vo, a wine town in the Veneto region, had died – at that time, the first known fatality from a case of a virus transmitted locally in the West, triggering alarms .
In the following days and weeks, the densely populated Lombardy would become the epicenter of the outbreak in Italy, and by the end of March, the countries of the world would be closed to curb the spread of the virus that has now killed 2.4 million lives. But Vo, as one of the first cities in the West to be isolated, has a unique history, providing some of the earliest scientific insights into the deadly virus.
The death of Adriano Trevisan caused shock waves through the city west of Venice. Trevisan, known around Vo and a regular at a card game at a local bar, had been hospitalized for two weeks for circulatory problems related to heart disease that could not be resolved with medication, according to his doctor, Dr. Carlo Petruzzi. . There was no reason to suspect the coronavirus, as the retiree had had no contact with China, until then a key element in the diagnosis.
After receiving death counseling, Mayor Giuliano Martini, who acts as the city’s chief pharmacist, ordered the closure of non-essential schools and businesses and banned residents from leaving the city, even for work. He asked groups of local volunteers to help ensure that food and pharmaceutical supplies entering the city were transported to the shelves. The three family doctors in the city were quarantined on suspicion of contact and the nearest hospital, a 30-minute drive away, was closed.
“It was like a war movie,” Martini said. “We were completely alone.”
Surrounded by vineyards and farmland, the city of 3,270 people located on Monte Venda has long enjoyed a bucolic isolation. But three days after Trevisan’s death, his isolation was secured by a government decree: Rome sent soldiers to seal the city’s 12 access roads. Blockades were also established in the ten cities near Milan, where the other early case of local transmission was confirmed.
“There was a sense of bewilderment, I would say,” said Dr. Luca Rossetto, one of the Vo practitioners. “Even I, with an old specialization in preventive hygiene, should have the right mentality. But there was an absolute disorientation.
Rossetto reviewed his recent cases and realized he had seen seven people the previous days with pneumonia-like symptoms. One week later, the same 69-year-old doctor was hospitalized with the virus, a minor case from which he recovered.
Meanwhile, Veneto Governor Luca Zaia instinctively ordered blanket testing for all Vo residents, with the goal of understanding the origin of the outbreak. That he was even able to make this call is thanks to the forecast of virologist Andrea Crisanti of the University of Padua, who had ordered the necessary tools after the virus appeared in China. Many places around the world struggled to test so quickly.
Crisanti acknowledged that there would be courage in testing the entire city immediately after the contagion was confirmed and, again, after two weeks. And his work offered a first glimpse of how the virus spread, a clarity that Crisanti said never translated correctly into action.
The results of the first round of nasal swab tests, available on February 27, showed that almost 3% of the population had become infected. This indicated that the virus had been circulating in the city since the end of January, according to Crisanti.
“With this data we should have immediately closed Veneto and Lombardy,” Crisanti said. But decision-makers, he said, “did not perceive the scope of the problem.”
The question of whether more restrictions on the movement should have been imposed before has been hotly debated in Italy, and many politicians noted that these decisions were extremely difficult as the measures carry a heavy economic and social cost and infringe on freedoms. . There is even a criminal investigation into whether officials waited too long to close two cities in Lombardy.
Vo stop was extraordinarily effective at stopping transmission. When Crisanti conducted the second round of testing on March 7, no new cases were detected.
Crisanti said the findings, which were published by the journal Nature in June but were immediately known to Italian officials, made it clear that isolation and mass testing were the best way to contain the virus before vaccines.
Although Crisanti managed to persuade the Veneto region to increase evidence, it was not until March 9, 17 days after the virus was detected simultaneously in two Italian regions, with multiple cases and a mass exodus to the south – that then- Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ordered the whole country an almost total closure that would last seven weeks.
By the end of May, as cases began to recede in Italy, more than 232,684 people had been infected, mostly in the north, and 33,415 had died.
Scientists still do not know how the virus reached Vo.
Although hit at the same time, the Veneto performed much better than Lombardy, which became the epicenter of the two Italian waves. It has half the population and its industry is more widespread, but experts have also accredited its health system, which allows close contact between family doctors, district administrators and hospital officials and which depends less on the private facilities. Another key element in his fight against the virus was the testing system created by Crisanti.
Crisanti urged the Rome government in August to expand its capacity for nasal swab tests in hopes of keeping transmission low after a successful blockade. Although the government does, Crisanti is disappointed that it has relied heavily on rapid testing – like many other sites and as some experts have recommended – rather than deploying more reliable nasal swab strategies to isolate outbreaks.
In October, Italy was fighting a resurgence that has proved even more deadly than the peak of spring, with the toll now close to 95,000. New clusters of a variant first found in Britain have caused blockages located across the country, forcing one of the commemorations of the virus’s anniversary this weekend in Lombardy to be canceled.
If the arrival of the virus last February shocked the country with suspicion, the long-expected resurgence of the fall was a “madness,” Crisanti said.
Vo also suffered a resurgence that is now only diminishing. The death toll from the city’s pandemic doubled to 6.
With an unusually high number of restaurants per capita to 45 restaurants, Vo is now an echo of its former state. Weddings, baptisms, and first communions that attracted residents of cities near the hill town have been limited by restrictions. Restaurant closures also forced the Vo wine cooperative to reduce production by 2020. The local ballroom has never reopened.
Things could have been different, Martini believes.
“The virus in Vo reached Vo and died in Vo,” the mayor of the first cases said a year ago. The fact of not repeating the model: “Ruinous,” he said.