Life under lockdown in Italy

A south Cavan native working in northern Italy is hopeful that his adopted home is over the worst of the devastating effects of COVID-19.
The Celt first caught up with Daniel Brady when the country had just gone into lockdown, about three weeks ago. The interim has seen a succession of grim headlines, and the country emerge with the unwanted record of having the most deaths from COVID-19 worldwide.
New cases of the highly infectious virus have stabilised between 4,000-5,000 per day, giving credence to the Italian government’s statements that they were hopeful it had plateaued. The death rate however was about to breach 16,000 - including over 100 medics - in a population of 60 million.
“The system is just so flooded with patients,” observed Daniel. “Hopefully in the next week or so they will see the deaths decreasing as well.”
Daniel is from, Carrickacleevan, a townland between Ballinagh and Arva and is studying in University of Padua. He’s in the second of a four-year PhD cours in Genetics and Immunology.
“I work on infectious diseases so it’s a pretty interesting period - quite surreal,” he tells The Anglo-Celt.
The Italian government put out a call for anyone with experience in immunology research to volunteer their help. Noting that the research would have required techniques he uses “all of the time”, Daniel was eager to assist.
“My Italian isn’t great so I said ‘if I can help, I’ll help!’ but I’m not fluent and there would be a lot of paperwork involved. I did put in my name but they were overrun with volunteers to help from the university.”
Padua is a city of about 250,000 people located between Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy, which were the two regions to have a status red alert and bring the world’s gaze upon Italy’s response to the crisis.
“We’re still having deaths - we’re having 30 or 40 a day, compared to Lombardy, they were having hundreds,” recalled Daniel.
Soon after, the whole country went into lockdown.
“It has touched everybody - everybody knows somebody who’s been sick,” says Daniel.
Given that the symptoms affect people to varying degrees, Daniel now wonders if he has already had coronavirus.
“There was a period in January when my supervisor was really ill and she took about a week off. I was bad at the time - I just put it down to stress at work, because it was a busy period for us. We were saying maybe we did have it, but sure we don’t know and there’s no tests available for us to see yet whether we have already had it.”
Italy has been in lockdown since March 9, and Daniel notes that, “Everyone is getting a bit fatigued by it now.”
How’s he surviving the long evenings? “I’m watching the same as everybody else on Netflix - Tiger King.”
The Italian police are, like their garda counterparts, mounting checkpoints where citizens have to produce a certificate declaring amongst other things, why they are outside, and that they don’t believe they have COVID-19.
“It’s pretty intimidating to be honest,” Daniel says of being stopped by the Polizia di Stato. “They’re quite strict, and quite forceful and I’m by no means fluent in Italian so having to explain why I’m out and about is a bit unnerving.
“They take your details if they stop you, and if they see you’ve been out a few times or they think you are taking the Mick then you can get fined.”
According to the English paper ‘The Independent’ the fine is between €400-€3000, and as of Monday there had been over 175,000 people fined.
Aside from the fines, life under lockdown in Italy sounds similar to Ireland: Pedestrians giving each other a wide berth, taped out spaces for queues at grocery stores, eateries operating delivery services, and shops only letting a certain number in at any one time.
The Italians appear to have taken to wearing masks with more zeal. “When everybody at home was buying toilet roll, people here were buying masks. They cleaned out the shops, I guess they had the right idea.”
Does Daniel keep in touch with his family at home? “Sure we’re talking every day - too much talking to be honest,” he jokes. “Everybody’s calling all the time!”