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'We Barely Paid Attention' Until COVID-19 Hit Home

Tsion Girma

   Negasi Kibrom remembers the day he first felt ill. He had been working
   in his electrical supply shop in Milan's Porta Venezia neighborhood
   when a customer walked in, needing help. Negasi barely noticed the
   man's sneezes -- until later, when he had gone upstairs to the
   apartment he shares with his wife and their two teenage daughters. Then
   he, too, started sneezing.

   That Thursday, March 18, marked the onset of Negasi's symptoms of
   COVID-19, the terrifying infection that has engulfed his family, his
   country and the world. Milan is the capital of Lombardy, the
   hardest-hit region in the nation most ravaged by the coronavirus. Italy
   had recorded more than 17,100 deaths from the respiratory disease as of
   Wednesday, according to [1]Johns Hopkins University researchers.

   People in Lombardy and other parts of northern Italy mostly have been
   restricted to their homes since March 8, a government-imposed
   quarantine extended to the whole country days later. The World Health
   Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.

   Nonetheless, "we barely paid attention to what they used to tell us
   about the virus and the precautions we need to take," Negasi,
   originally from Ethiopia, told VOA's Amharic Service in a Skype
   interview last week.

   That changed when the coronavirus that was all over the news eventually
   turned up in their home.

References

   1. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

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