Italy’s state of emergency is over ‘but the pandemic isn’t’

Italy enters a ‘new phase’ from April 1st, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said, as the country prepares to ease many of its Covid-19 health restrictions. The online newspaper “The Local” reported: “The end of the state of emergency does not mean that the virus is gone or that the pandemic is over”. Speranza told Italian TV chat show ‘Che tempo che fa’ on Sunday, as he stressed that many health restrictions would remain in place for at least another month. “Compared to other countries we have chosen a more gradual approach,” Speranza said.(www.thelocal.it)

Since December 31, 2019, the day when the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission (China) reported a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown etiologyaetiology in the city of Wuhan to the World Health Organization, things have changed.  Initially this reality seemed distant to us precisely because it happened on the other side of the world, until one day, we students were told that for the next few weeks we did not have to go to school, obviously unaware that those two weeks would first become 1 month, then 2, then 3 and so on.  It seemed almost a nightmare not to be able to leave the house, our life has changed a lot, we had to be careful with whatever we touched, we could not go out without a mask, the streets were deserted and we are increasingly tired of this reality that has changed us but now, after two years it seems that the situation is improving.  Our social relationships have changed a lot, from being in contact with friends to seeing each other behind a screen and when we were supposed to see each other we couldn’t hug each other for fear of getting infected, we couldn’t even invite a relative for the holidays to have lunch with you.  Furthermore, we did not tend to count the time. They, they spent whole days cooking or watching television, time seemed to stop, those days were eternal, without doing anything, without being able to work, without going to school, without freedom.  After these two years, even if now we can be a little freer I hope that those dark times will not return, by now we know how we have to behave so we must not let ourselves go so easily.  It will be difficult to go back to living without a mask because we have always been used to recognizing people only by the eyes because the mask covers the face and expressions.  I hope, especially for our young people, that all this will never return because, in my opinion, the ones who suffered the most from it were us young people.