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.

Across the north, sick patients died unattended on hospital beds, their…