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First Person: "My Family Cannot Remember What Good News is Like"

In Arco, a tiny town sitting in the northern part of Italy, my family cannot remember what good news feels like. In the past two months, covid-19 shook our country so violently that my parents, Stefania and Gianni, and older brother, Davide, began wondering if there would ever be a way out of this pandemic.

For the entire month of March, the 6 p.m. press conference held daily by the Head of Civil Protection Angelo Borrelli sounded like a broken record. The number of covid-19 cases rose, the list of overcrowded intensive care units thickened and hospitals desperately called for more medical equipment and personnel.