Reporting on Covid-19 in Italy: 'Life as we've known it has stopped'

Our Italy correspondent on how the crisis went from a foreign news story to a crisis that has cost thousands of Italian lives

Sometimes being a journalist means having to improvise. It was Sunday 23 February when Italy announced draconian measures to stop people leaving or entering 11 towns that had been put under quarantine - 10 in the Lombardy region and one in Veneto. I got up early that day to hike around Lake Albano in Castel Gandolfo, about 40 minutes by train from Rome. I had left home more prepared for the possibility of needing to work – bringing with me a notepad and pen – than I did for the hike.

Sure enough, 20 minutes into the walk the announcement came. I stopped, found a spot by the lake, and wrote the first 600 words that began the Guardian’s coverage of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak. Fortunately, I have a robust smartphone. Sitting by the lake, I had a feeling that life as we knew it had stopped. By the end of that day, three people had died of the virus and 152 were infected.

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