COVID-19 kills off Carnival in Italy’s north as toll hits 29 deaths

Carnival time, celebrated in many Italian regions during the 40 days before Easter, has been hit hard by COVID-19.

A young tourist wearing a protective facemask and a Carnival mask visits the streets of Venice last week during the usual period of the Carnival festivities Picture: AFP

Carnival time, celebrated just before Lent, the 40-day period to Easter, traditionally means merriment and levity, masquerading and special sweets. Young children dress up and throw confetti and streamers in the streets of villages and towns. All the pasticcerie sell the traditional fried Carnival pastries with colourful names such as chiacchiere (chatter) and bugie (lies).

But not so in 2020. In northern Italy, things have been decidedly less carefree. Like many families, we left Milan on a recent Friday night, taking the children to the mountains for Carnival celebrations. On the way up, we listened to the car radio and heard about the outbreak of COVID-19. And as the news coverage was updated, our unease grew. Several small towns near Milan were immediately shut down.

It was hard to know what to think. Was this an overreaction? Would the virus be limited to the one cluster that had been identified?

By Saturday, the numbers of infections were soaring. There were rumours of wider school closures. A friend and I joked that having to stay inside with our children for days on end would be almost worse than the thought of contracting the virus. Then on Sunday it became reality.

The whole Lombardy region was put on lockdown, with all schools, universities, sporting facilities and museums shut for an initial one-week period. The annual Milan Fashion Week runway shows have been live-streamed to virtual audiences. The Milano Clown Festival, in its 14th year and one of the city’s biggest carnival events, didn’t take place late last week. Its international performers had already arrived; the stage was dismantled.

When the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, held his press conference, he questioned whether such cancellations were the right actions. But the authorities are right to err on the side of caution. No one wants to put lives in danger, even if keeping children at home risks parental sanity.

And although Milan has the best medical system in Italy, it will struggle to cope if there are hundreds more cases. As I write this on Thursday night, there are 216 coronavirus patients admitted to Lombardy hospitals. Cremona and Lodi, the hardest-hit provincial cities, are struggling to find the resources to treat those in a critical condition.

How to fill in long days with your children inside, without school or sport, when attending large social events is actively discouraged? In Milan it is recommended that people don’t go out more than they need to, while the 10 Lombardy towns in the so-called “red zone” of the original cluster, plus one in the Veneto, are under full quarantine, with police barricades set up.

A lot of families who headed for the Alps for Carnival have decided to stay on there until the situation becomes clearer as, with schools closed, it’s far preferable to have kids outdoors in alpine environments than cooped up in the city.

My family and I are among the lucky ones. But as I walk through the village square, there isn’t much in the way of the customary seasonal frivolity and merriment.

There’s a lot of chatter about masks of the surgical (not Carnival) variety, and about hygiene. And a lot of anxious children to whom you wish you could say everything will be just fine.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has called for calm as the coronavirus continues to spread past its original outbreak point in the north. Most recent statistics reveal 1000-plus confirmed cases of the virus and 29 deaths in Italy.

Eleven towns in the northern region of Lombardy and Veneto remain under lockdown with schools, universities and public venues closed. “It’s time to turn down the tone, we need to stop panic,” Mr Conte told La Repubblica newspaper.