With heavy hearts, Italians mark year of COVID-19 outbreak

CODOGNO, Italy (AP) — With wreath-laying ceremonies, tree plantings and church services, Italians on Sunday marked one year since their country experienced its first known COVID-19 death.

Towns in Italy’s north were the first to be hard-hit by the pandemic and put under lockdown, and residents paid tribute to the dead. Italy, with some 95,500 confirmed virus dead, has Europe’s second-highest pandemic toll after Britain. Experts say the virus also killed many others who were never tested.

While the first wave of infections largely engulfed Lombardy and other northern regions, a second surge starting in the fall of 2020 has raced throughout the country. The number of new coronavirus infections has remained stubbornly high despite a raft of restrictions on travel between regions, and in some cases between towns. In addition, gyms, cinemas and theaters have been closed and restaurants and bars must shut early in the evening. Nationwide there’s a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

So far, Italy has confirmed 2.8 million cases.

Authorities unveil a memorial for COVID deaths, in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Authorities unveil a memorial for Covid deaths, in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Codogno’s citizens attend the unveiling of a memorial for Covid deaths, in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Codogno’s citizens attend the unveiling of a memorial for Covid deaths, in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
People and cyclists relax in front of the San Biagio church in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Codogno’s citizens attend the unveiling of a memorial for Covid deaths, in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Codogno’s citizens attend the unveiling of a memorial for Covid deaths, in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
A man plays an accordion in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
A woman walks past a newsstand with the local paper headline reading “Covid, One Year After”, in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
A man lights a candle during a Mass at the San Biagio church in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
A woman walks in front of the Civic Hospital in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
People follow the unveiling of a memorial for Covid deaths in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
A man plays an accordion in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. With wreath-laying ceremonies, tree plantings and church services, Italians on Sunday marked the passing of one year since their country experienced the first known COVID-19 locally spread cases in the West. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
People attend a Mass in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in the small town of Codogno, Italy one year ago on February 21st, 2020. The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cutoff from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Birds fly over the San Biagio church in Codogno, northern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. Italians are marking one year since their country experienced the first known locally transmitted COVID-19 case in the West. With church services Sunday and wreath-laying ceremonies, including in small northern towns which were the first to be hard-hit by the pandemic, residents paid tribute to the dead. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
FILE – in this Sunday, Dec. 13, 2020 filer, nurse Maurizio di Giacobbe tends to a patient in a COVID-19 ICU of the Tor Vergata Polyclinic Hospital. Pope Francis and Italy’s president have marked the nation’s first annual day to honor doctors, nurses and other health care workers, exactly a year after the nation’s first known native case of COVID-19 emerged. In a message to honor those caring for COVID-19 patients, Frances hailed the “generous involvement, at times heroic, of the profession lived as mission.” (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)

It was in the hospital at the Lombard town of Codogno where a doctor recognized what would go down in medical history as the first known COVID-19 case in the West in a patient with no links to the outbreak in Asia, where coronavirus infections initially emerged. The diagnosis was made on the evening of Feb. 20, 2020, in a 38-year-old otherwise healthy, athletic man.

Near the Red Cross office in Codogno on Sunday, Lombardy’s governor and the town mayor attended a ceremony to unveil a monument to COVID-19 victims. The memorial consists of three steel pillars, representing resilience, community and starting over. A wreath was laid, and townspeople stood in silence to honor the dead.

The Codogno hospital patient survived, after being transferred to another hospital and spending weeks on a respirator.

But it was in the northeastern town of Vo, in the neighboring Veneto region, where Italy’s first known COVID-19 death was registered on Feb. 21, 2020.

In Vo’s memorial ceremony, officials planted a tree. A plaque has been installed, quoting a line from the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo, whose works are widely studied by the nation’s schoolchildren. The inscription reads: “A man never dies if there is someone who remembers him.”

Italy’s first known fatality from COVID-19 was a 77-year-old Vo man, a retired roofer who liked to play cards.