Codogno method

The experience of Codogno in the past month has been to try to contain the spread of the virus by containing its people. It’s been called the “Codogno method”.

But in a democracy with individual freedoms, how far can you push people to comply? Even more stringent measures have been applied in China, but how would that work in a country such as the UK?

“Top-down public health measures don’t work if they don’t get buy-in from communities,” says Melissa Leach, director of the Institute of Development Studies, at the University of Sussex, who worked on tackling the Ebola epidemic.

You have to understand people’s “fears and anxieties”, she says, and at present the public mood is dominated by “uncertainty”.

She says there needs to be a “humanised” approach which recognises there are “questions of ethics, rights and justice” rather than “riding roughshod over people’s feelings”.

In Italy there have been strict instructions to limit movement, while the UK’s approach has been more about voluntary guidance.

“It’s strikingly distinct from other governments,” says former home secretary Charles Clarke, who in office was involved in contingency planning for disasters such as pandemics and terror attacks.

The key difference is the extent to which the UK government is steered by scientific advice, says Clarke, with the visual embodiment being that when the prime minister speaks he is flanked by his expert advisers.

“Politicians’ words are never going to reassure people. They think politicians have other motives,” says Clarke.

He backs the policy of sticking to the scientific evidence and says there will have been very detailed planning and rehearsal of each step taken, including the language of how it’s presented.

For instance, a phrase like “self-isolating” suggests a positive choice by people and not something imposed on them by government.

But for those in Lombardy whose families have already suffered, there are more immediate worries.

Maria Vittoria Falchetti is getting her family’s company, MTA, back up and running again - while mourning the loss of her father.

“Work is the only thing that keeps us alive at the moment, despite the fear and mourning,” she says, with production now resumed in Codogno and a factory in Shanghai. It’s another example of the connectivity that links even a small town with the global economy.

She says her father would have been proud of how the workforce in Codogno has “pitched in” to help.

Staff now stand apart from each other, they have their temperatures checked and are given gloves and the face masks that have become the hallmark of the pandemic.

It’s been a continuous story of the grimly unexpected, including the death of her father.

“He had a high fever and was having difficulty breathing. The ambulance took him to the hospital and we never saw him again. He died alone,” she says. “They didn’t allow us to visit him.”

Falchetti says she feels “scared and dazed” by what’s happened.

Even when “normality” comes back, she says, “nothing will be the same any more”.