Inside Italy’s ‘red zone’: Life under lockdown in Europe’s worst outbreak of coronavirus

‘Nobody knew Codogno, it’s a remote small town – now everyone thinks of us as lepers,’ one resident tells Alessio Perrone

A guard talks to a driver at a checkpoint in Zorlesco, southeast of Milan (AFP/Getty)

As the new day broke, residents of the Italian town of Fombio, south of Milan, woke up to silence, closed bars – and quarantine.

“There’s a lot of silence, you can’t hear any cars outside. Everything has been closed since Saturday,” says Omar Salvatori, a 29-year-old resident and steelworker. “It’s like going out on Christmas while everyone else is still eating.”

Fombio is one of the 11 northern Italian towns in the “red zone”, the coronavirus outbreak area of northern Italy that has been under lockdown after the first cases of the illness were discovered last week.