A year after Italy became the first European country to impose a national blockade to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the country was frighteningly quiet again, with new restrictions imposed on Monday in an effort to stop a third wave of infections that are threatening to sweep Europe and crush its mass inoculation program.
In explaining the measures on Friday, Prime Minister Mario Draghi warned that Italy was facing a “new wave of contagion”, driven by more infectious variants of the coronavirus.
As before, Italy was not alone.
“We have clear signs: the third wave in Germany has already started,” said Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, during a news conference on Friday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary predicted that this week would be the most difficult since the beginning of the pandemic in terms of allocating hospital beds and breathing apparatus, as well as mobilizing nurses and doctors. Hospitalizations in France have been at their highest levels since November, prompting authorities to consider a third national blockade.
Across Europe, cases are increasing. The scarcity of supplies and skepticism about vaccines, as well as bureaucracy and logistical obstacles, have reduced the pace of inoculations. Governments are putting depleted populations under lockdown. Street protests are becoming violent. A year after the virus started to spread in Europe, things look terribly the same.
In Rome, the empty streets, closed schools, closed restaurants and canceled Easter holidays were a relief to some residents after months of growing infections, suffocated hospitals and deaths.
“It is a liberation to return to the blockade, because for months, after everything that happened, people of all ages were going out acting as if there was no problem,” said Annarita Santini, 57, as she pedaled in front of the Trevi Fountain, a popular site that had no visitors, except three policemen. “At least that way,” she added, “the air can be cleaned and people will be scared again.”
For months, Italy relied on a color-coded system of restrictions that, unlike last year’s general blockade, sought to surgically stifle emerging outbreaks to keep much of the country open and functioning. It doesn’t seem to have worked.
“History repeats itself,” Massimo Galli, one of Italy’s leading virologists, told Corriere della Sera on Monday. “The third wave has started and the variants are working.”
“Unfortunately, we were all under the illusion that the arrival of vaccines would reduce the need for more drastic closings,” he said. “But the vaccines did not arrive in sufficient quantities.”