Milan, Italy – Italy discovered its first COVID-19 infections a year ago. The outbreak led to the first national blockade outside China, and has claimed more than 95,000 lives across the country. But, as CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay reports, it is now a very different story.
Life is slowly returning to normal, and Italians packed the streets over the weekend – even in the north of the country, which was once the epicenter of their coronavirus Epidemic.
Beatrice has just turned a year, and what a year it has been. Two weeks after his birth, his mother noticed a fever.
“Before, when my kids coughed, we didn’t freak out immediately,” mother Marta Zaninoni told CBS News. “But now in our family, a cough is no longer just a cough. It is very stressful.”
Beatrice had COVID-19 – the first known case in Europe in a newborn.
“They immediately put it in an incubator,” said Zaninoni. “I couldn’t even say goodbye.”
While her little body battled the disease in isolation, Beatrice became a symbol of hope for the region of Bergamo, where her family was hit hard.
Many followed his progress at the hospital, and the entire country would soon join Beatrice in isolation. Infections soared, plunging towns, cities and then all of Italy into what was – for a free society – unthinkable: blockade.
The death toll soared, and as the disease forced members of the military to turn into funeral directors and granaries in makeshift morgues, it stole not only people’s lives but also their dignity.
The iconic streets of Italian cities had no people. Pope Francis even performed an unprecedented solitary religious service, virtually. In small towns like Nembro, which once had the highest death rate in the country, Catholic Mass was held in front of empty seats for most of 2020.
But today, from Milan to Rome, life is coming back. On Sunday, the Nembro church was packed.
“Last year, we had 188 funerals,” Don Matteo Cella, the priest in Nembro, told Livesay. “This year, people are planning weddings.”
The old traditions are returning to Italy, but with some differences. A year ago, something as simple as drinking a cappuccino outdoors had become unthinkable.
Life has hardly returned to normal; the law still requires you to wear a mask at all times in public, even outdoors, except when eating or drinking.
It is a slow recovery and not without casualties – something Beatrice’s mother knows firsthand as a COVID survivor. The virus killed his uncle and grandfather while Beatrice was still in the hospital.
“They never knew Beatrice,” lamented Zaninoni, adding that the illness brought the rest of the family closer than ever.
“Finally, after 40 days, Beatrice was released from COVID on Easter Day,” recalled the mother. “It was a real resurrection for us. Despite all the deaths in Italy, Beatrice brought us to life.”
A year later, Italians are now eagerly awaiting doses of the vaccine.
Deployment across the European Union has been slower than in the United States. Many Italians in their 80s still don’t know when they will have their first chance – a particular concern in a country with one of the world’s oldest populations.