For The First Time, No Deaths Registered In The Most Hit Region By Coronavirus In Italy

Yesterday, May 24, for the first time Lombardy, the most hit region in Italy by coronavirus, has registered zero deaths. Hospitals around the region, which since the beginning of the emergency have sent daily reports to the local administration, have not submitted any news of new casualties.

But the experts say that the data will need to be better analyzed, before it can be considered final, and that it will be necessary to wait for the new data on Monday 25th to be certain. 

The governor of the region, Attilio Fontana, also said that this news should be taken with skepticism. “What comforts me is that the number of new infected people is decreasing. The zero dead is a figure that will need to be taken with a grain of salt, because unfortunately Sundays are the days in which the communication is not always precise and accurate; sometimes the data comes in with a delay. It is certainly a very positive number, but let’s not give ourselves false hopes that it is over”, the governor said.

Lombardy is the region in Italy which has had the most hotbeds since the beginning of the epidemic in the country, with more than 84,000 cases and over 15,000 deaths - half of Italy’s total casualties, which amount to more than 30,000. 

While this impact was, to an extent, unpredictable, according to experts part of the difficulty in containing the epidemic levels was due to the way the health system is structured in the region. Specifically, reforms over the past 20 years built a mix of private and public health system which facilitated private services, depriving public hospitals of resources. This is said to also have led to an increasing centralization of emergencies on hospitals, instead of strengthening general practitioners and local clinics. 

A number of experts also point to a number of unfortunate choices made by the regional administration during the emergency. This led to a big argument in the national parliament last week, when a Five Star Movement MP, Riccardo Ricciardi, attacked the “Lombardy model”, to which Lega MPs reacted with loud complaints, standing up from their seats and walking down to the speakers’ aisle. Roberto Fico, the president of the Chamber, at that point suspended the session.

Currently, Lombardy has followed the new openings on May 4th and May 18th, like the rest of the country - the so-called ‘phase two’ of the emergency. According to experts, it is yet to be seen whether the openings are going to lead to a substantial surge in the number of cases across the country.

But on social media and elsewhere debate and worry is widespread given the number of people who, especially in the city of Milan, Lombardy’s capital, have started attending bars in large crowds, going back to what appear to be normal times. Milan is well-known for its vibrant night life, called “movida”. The city’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, in the past weeks addressed the milanese citizens with a very vocal message in which he called on people’s sense of responsibility, specifying that he was ready to “shut everything down again” if citizens were not going to behave reliably.