How Covid-19 has been spreading in Italy

The first cases, in the most affected country by the coronavirus outside China, were two visitors from the Chinese town of Wuhan, the epicenter of the infection. 

The next day Italy became the first country to block all flights to and from China. But the virus was already spreading: a man known as "patient one", with severe flu-like symptoms, was only diagnosed  on the second visit hospital after 36 hours. He had had a dinner party and had gone running a marathon. Northern Italy was sealed off quickly.

Within a few day, exactly on March 11, the lockdown was extended to the entire country. Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, ordered all but most essential businesses to close until at least April the 3rd. The entire country, home to over than 60 million people, was, and still is, on lockdown. Italy became first democratic country since the second world war to impose a nationwide lockdown.

Meanwhile, other countries, such as Spain, Germany, and the UK, that would have learnt the lesson from Italian experience, allowed the virus to spread silently until the last week of March 2020.

On the one hand, we saw that some Italian hospitals and care centres for elderly people became the epicenters of transmission. On the other hand, Italy couldn't endorse the same approach as we saw in Japan and Singapore, because there weren't enough coronavirus detection testing kits to meet demand. Consequently, the high rate of asymptomatic cases complicated efforts to stop the spread of the infection, because many hospitals didn't test people who hadn't a fever and flu-like symptoms.

Now, in late March, it is not too late to act in the rest of Europe. Many lives can be saves, as Italy has become the symbol of the challenge facing the Europe's public health system.