It's been exactly one year. A very long year that has profoundly marked the lives of all of us, and which has cost us - in Italy alone - almost 100.000 deaths (of which over a quarter only in Lombardy) and 2,77 million total cases. The first ascertained infected with Covid-19, the famous Patient Zero (although some studies have shown the possibility that there may have been previous positives, ascertained ex post), was found exactly twelve months ago in Codogno: it was February 20, 2020 and that day, a town of 15.000 inhabitants in the province of Lodi, it suddenly became the Wuhan of Italy.
The man, a 38-year-old resident in the area, had presented himself to the emergency room during the day, with severe flu and pneumonia symptoms, and around 20 pm of the same evening the confirmation of his positivity to the coronavirus had arrived: he was the first autochthonous case, i.e. of an Italian citizen infected in Italy, even if it was actually the third case ever ascertained on Italian territory, after the two Chinese tourists coming from Wuhan and hospitalized in the Spallanzani hospital in Rome since early February.
Mattia, this is the patient's name, was hospitalized in fairly serious conditions but was saved in the end. However, we all remember the frenzy and collective fear of those days that have forever upset our lives: Codogno becomes a town it becomes ghostly, masks are nowhere to be found, the Municipality closes bars and restaurants and in less than 72 hours Codogno is isolated, the Army surrounds it: it is the first red zone in Italy, before the presence of the virus was then proven in every corner of the country and the planet.
