![]() ![]() Zoe has written handwashing instructions out on a piece of paper and taped them to the bathroom door. Some everyday routines like handwashing have taken on greater importance. The family have been under lockdown in their Milan flat. Zoe Balsotti with her father Ale and mother Ilaria. Not that the office is anything like it once was before Italy's strict social-distancing guidelines came into force.įace-to-face meetings have been banned and those employees who are still at work keep themselves locked away in their own offices. Most of the staff have been told to take their annual leave or work at home but Emma is still going into the office every day. Milan's Emma Alberici is the chief financial officer at a large pharmaceutical company, which has been deemed essential and is still open. Ariel has made a tart with wholemeal buckwheat. There's been music and dancing in the living room to pass the hours locked away from the outside world. The television news is on as her partner Ariel dices onions and cooks pasta sauce, clanging a saucepan on the hob. Meanwhile, inside Emma's apartment it's a rare hive of activity for a weekday. The city's street life has been silenced and only those with a legitimate reason for leaving home can venture outside. Centuries-old churches not closed since the days of the plague are locked up. Street life in the piazzas has been silenced tourists are nowhere to be seen. Milan's bars, cafes and restaurants are shuttered. The streets outside the central Milan apartment of Emma Alberici - the cousin of the ABC's Emma Alberici - are normally clogged with cars and lined with shoppers browsing the exclusive fashion boutiques. "I haven't spent this much time with them for a long time and it's really nice because we talk a lot more and have a lot more to talk about." Above the empty streets "I've never been so connected with my kids," she says. Family closeness has been an unexpected silver lining for Catriona too. Cailin admits he's also feeling "cabin fever" too.īut there are also positives to the lockup, like seeing dad - who is currently unable to travel for his manufacturing business - more often. They will not admit you." EmmaĪfter weeks cooped up inside, Sebastian finds it "depressing" that he can't go to sport and see his friends. "If you go to the hospital because you have a temperature they will send you away. Northern Italy, where Catriona and her family live, has rapidly become the new global epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic.Ĭaught unprepared by the lethal speed of the outbreak, hospitals in Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna were quickly stretched to breaking point and beyond. I have never seen anything like it." At coronavirus ground zero ![]() "I would never have dreamed that we would be in this situation two to three weeks ago, I would never have imagined it because it is quite simply unprecedented. Soon even small gatherings of people were banned and Italians were told to keep at least a metre away from each other. "We'd wake up and there are new measures announced overnight restricting more and more movement," Catriona says. Her boys' sport was cancelled then schools were closed and she was forced to run her Milan-based software business from her home. It happened slowly at first, with minor restrictions on movement and large public gatherings. Like most Italians, Catriona didn't see the lockdown coming.
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