CODOGNO, Italy (AP) – With wreath-laying ceremonies, tree planting and church services, it was a year ago on Sunday that Italians experienced the first known COVID-19 death in their country.
Cities in the north of Italy were the first badly hit by the pandemic and imprisoned, and residents paid tribute to the dead. Italy, with about 95,500 confirmed virus deaths, has the second highest pandemic in Europe after Britain. Experts say the virus has also killed many others who have never been tested.
While the first wave of infections largely engulfed Lombardy and other northern regions, a second wave from the fall of 2020 has spread across the country. The number of new coronavirus infections has remained stubbornly high despite a slew of restrictions on travel between regions and in some cases between cities. In addition, gyms, cinemas and theaters are closed and restaurants and bars must close early in the evening. There is a national curfew from 10 PM to 5 AM.
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 happen in medical history as the first known COVID-19 case in the West in a patient unrelated to the outbreak in Asia, where coronavirus infections initially emerged . . The diagnosis was made on the evening of February 20, 2020 in a 38-year-old, otherwise healthy, athletic man.
Near the Red Cross office in Codogno, the governor of Lombardy and the mayor attended a ceremony on Sunday to unveil a monument to COVID-19 victims. The monument consists of three steel pillars that represent resilience, community and starting over. A wreath was laid and the townspeople stood in silence in honor of the dead.
‘Panic, total panic’, one of Codogno’s 15,000 inhabitants, Rosaria Sanna, recalled what she felt at the start on Sunday. And a year later “I’m still scared because it’s not over yet.”
Some of her fellow townspeople lit candles during Sunday Mass in the morning in the St. Blaise Church of Codogno.
Codogno’s hospital patient survived after being transferred to another hospital and spent weeks on a ventilator.
But it was in the northeastern town of Vo, in the neighboring region of Veneto, where Italy’s first known COVID-19 death was recorded on February 21, 2020.
During the memorial ceremony, officials planted a tree. There is a plaque quoting a phrase by the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo, whose works are widely studied by the country’s school children. The inscription reads, “A man never dies if there is someone who remembers him.”
The first known fatal victim of COVID-19 in Italy was a 77-year-old Vo man, a retired roofer who loved to play cards.
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