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Italy's poorer south preps potential explosion of coronavirus, threatens students with 'flamethrowers'

Italy’s poorer south appears to be readying for war, expecting a sudden explosion in coronavirus cases within the next 10 days, as the novel illness advances down the peninsula from the northern, affluent Lombardy region.

One of the first cases of the coronavirus in Italy was identified February 21 in Codogno, a town of just under 16,000 people located southeast of Milan in the northern Lombardy region. The rapid spread of the virus devastated the region within a matter of weeks. Lombardy now accounts for nearly half -- 41,007 – of the country’s confirmed cases, with at least 6,360 deaths, according to Milan News International.

A nationwide lockdown was implemented on March 10 to slow the spread of the virus – but still, cases continue to rise in the south, most notably in the dense city of Naples, where nearly 1 million people squeeze within 46 square miles, and the surrounding Campania region.

“In the South, the situation is about to explode dramatically. The next 10 days here will be hell,” Vincenzo de Luca, Campania’s governor, said in a recent letter addressed to the central government, according to The Wall Street Journal. “There is the real possibility that there will be a tragedy in the South, on top of Lombardy’s.”

His letter requested additional ventilators for hospitals in the south, a region historically worse off economically compared to the country’s northern industrial hub. Most equipment, including surgical masks, have been prioritized to address the crisis in Lombardy, while some local business in the south, otherwise devastated by the nationwide lockdown, are sewing protective gear for medical personnel.

“Almost everything has gone to Lombardy,” Michele Emiliano, the governor of Apulia, a region that sits on Italy's boot, told the Journal, explaining he spends most of his day tracking down medical supplies to purchase. “We are preparing for war, but we don’t have all the necessary tools.”

Lombardy, as well as 14 other surrounding provinces in the north, were placed under lockdown earlier this month, prompting thousands of mostly university students to hop on some of the last trains south before travel restrictions went into effect. Individuals who returned from the north were instructed to self-isolate for two weeks, but many already infected older relatives by coming home.