On the date Italy decrees the shutdown of all "non essential production activity" due to coronavirus and Spain still refuses to take this step, prestigious newspaper The New York Times publishes a extensive analysis on the mistakes made by the Italian government that allowed the pandemic to reach such a critical status.
"The country’s experience shows that steps to isolate the coronavirus and limit people’s movement need to be put in place early, with absolute clarity, then strictly enforced" summarises the media outlet.
The article references the bad coordination between Rome and the other regions, which delayed of the imposing of restrictive measures. "I would have done them 10 days before," assures Walter Ricciardi, member of the World Health Organization. "For the coronavirus, 10 days can be a lifetime," reiterates the news outlet.
"Other governments have less room for excuses"
Sandra Zampa, the under-secretary at the Ministry of Health now agrees with this criteria and assures that in retrospect she would have closed everything immediately, but in real time, it wasn’t that clear. Total lockdown is what Catalonia, and now Murcia and Galicia, have been asking the Spanish government for days with no results.
"Politicians across the spectrum worried about the economy and feeding the country, and found it difficult to accept their impotence in the face of the virus. And unlike Italy, which navigated uncharted territory for a Western democracy, other governments have less room for excuses," points out the Times
"If we had shut everything down, we would now be celebrating victory
Attilio Fontana, president of the Lombardy region, focus of the illness, laments that politicians initially "were convinced that the situation was less serious and they did not want to hurt our economy too much."
Fontana had already demanded in several interviews for the Italian government to apply tougher national measures. "“My idea is that if we had shut everything in the beginning, for two weeks, probably now we would be celebrating victory,” he assures.