CODOGNO, Italy (AP) — For three weeks, children’s play has not echoed in the main piazza of the town of Codogno, overlooked by a statue of the town’s patron St. Blaise, a 4th-Century physician. But over that period, too, the silence has been pierced increasingly less often by ambulance sirens, which in the early days roared through every couple of hours.
Residents of the northern town that recorded Italy’s first locally spread coronavirus infection have provided a virtuous example for fellow Italians now facing an unprecedented nationwide lockdown: by staying home, trends can reverse. Infections of the new virus have not stopped in Codogno, which still has registered the most of any of the 10 Lombardy towns in Italy’s original red zone, but they have slowed.