Privately, though, national business lobbies urged him not to close the area’s factories. Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, publicly turned to a committee of scientific advisers, which formally proposed that he follow the example of Lodi and shut down the newly infected towns in Bergamo. Some mayors in Bergamo waited anxiously for the police to seal the borders, even as many business and local leaders expressed reluctance.

Her hospital, rather than identifying and treating the disease, was accelerating its spread across Italy’s economic heartland.įor days, there was an expectation that the national government would lock down towns in Bergamo, as it had earlier done immediately and decisively in Lodi. Avogadri, hamstrung by those same protocols, had herself fallen ill after days caring for Mr.

Avogadri did not know was that Covid-19 had already arrived in her region of Lombardy, a discovery made five days later by another doctor in nearby Lodi who broke the national testing protocol. They hardly ever ventured beyond their local cafe, Patty’s Bar. Orlandi had a connection to China, his wife seemed befuddled. She didn’t test him for the virus because Italian protocols, adopted from the World Health Organization, recommended testing only people with a link to China, where the outbreak had originated. Orlandi’s symptoms puzzled Monica Avogadri, the 55-year-old anesthesiologist who treated him at Pesenti Fenaroli Hospital. Italy had not recorded a single domestic coronavirus case, but Mr. Two days later, an ambulance brought the 83-year-old back.

But a Times investigation found that faulty guidance and bureaucratic delays rendered the toll far worse than it had to be.īERGAMO, Italy - When Franco Orlandi, a usually hale former truck driver, arrived in mid-February with a cough and fever at an emergency room in the northern Italian province of Bergamo, doctors determined that he had a flu and sent him home. The northern Italian province became one of the deadliest killing fields for the virus in the Western world.

Letting Go In Bergamo by Daniel Hansen