once the restrictions kicked in, i rearranged plans to spend christmas here with my partner's family and then we started getting symptoms on monday, tested positive for covid on wednesday and have been isolating since, so our christmas plans on both sides have been sort of thrown into a bit of chaos because of covid. despite best efforts to make this christmas better than the last, the pandemic is still front and centre of this holiday season. italy is one of countries experiencing unprecedented levels of coronavirus infections. for more on the situation there i spoke to dr raffaele bruno who is professor of infectious diseases at the university of pavia in italy. right now the situation in italy is worsening rapidly. we now have more