Shocking images of the Macabre procession of military trucks carrying coffins from Bergamo in northern Italy to other municipalities went around the world on March 18, 2020. A year later, the city martyred by the coronovirus continues to heal them. wound.

At the height of the epidemic, Father Marco Bergameli blessed the coffins every ten minutes. “It was full of coffins here, there were up to 132 feet to the altar,” he recalls, the doors of the memorial cemetery open.

“Initially, trucks came in the night, nobody should have known that the coffins were going somewhere else.” Heavy coffins with camouflaged tarpaulins were removed from the church by 70 coffins a day, as the funeral halls were filled.

And the crematorium crematorium could no longer withstand the heterotomb caused by the virus. The coffins were taken to Bologna, Modena or Ferrara.

Almost everyone in Bergamo has lost a family member, a friend, a colleague or a neighbor.

In the cemetery, small marble mausoleums are adjoining small dug graves, most of them without a tomb, with the name and photo of the deceased being characterized: it is “Campo Kovid” B1, the victim of the epidemic. Is reserved for the people.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, in March alone, 670 people died in the city of 120,000 residents in Bergamo and about 6,000 in the province of the same name, 5 to 6 times more than normal.

Father Bergameli, 66, said, “People saw their loved one leaving the ambulance with fever, and then they reduced him to ashes in the urn.”

– ‘As in wartime’ –

“It was like a time of war”, says this Capuchin ascetic with a decayed face, who has gone through funerals but does not consider himself a hero. For her, “heroes are doctors and nurses”.

In order to curb the third wave of controversies, Prime Minister Mario Puli had to rebuild much of Italy on Monday, with homages expected for victims of the epidemic in Lombard city on Thursday.

At the Seriate Hospital near Bergamo, the intensive care unit is once again full: its eight beds are all occupied by Kovid-19 patients, even though it is not comparable to the peak of the epidemic a year earlier.

A constant beep from the heart monitor and a roar of artificial ventilators echoed across the room.

The director of the unit, Roberto Keim, 59, is of concern, “Kovid is now more aggressive with many cases of the English version. The patients are younger than before.”

Many deny the officials’ lethargy in recognizing the severity of the crisis and taking sanctions, such as taking restrictive measures.

“In early March, we saw people attend the funerals of Kovid victims and die in their turn just a few weeks later,” said Robert Caprini, manager of the Generalley funeral directors.

– in the first row –

The 38-year-old brunette found herself at the frontline of the family business, with her father and uncle infected.

“Normally we organize 1,400 offices a year, but in March 2020 we did 1,000, which is about a year’s work a month.”

To give the deceased relatives a final greeting to the deceased, he would pass the horse under his balconies and take photographs of the corpses.

Mourning must have been an impossible task for many Bergamas.

“We spent a month without knowing where my father’s body Kovid died at the age of 85 on March 11,” says Luca Fusco, president of the “Noi Demniseremo” association. ) Belongs to.

Three weeks later, his son Stefano created the group to defend Kovid victims on Facebook, the next day there were 4,000 and 70,000.

Then, 250 handrails were filed with the Bergamo Prosecutor’s Office to “do justice to all those who died of kowla”. An investigation has been opened.

On February 23, 2020, in Alzano and Nembro’s homes in the Seriana Valley adjoining Bergamo, after the first cases of coronovirus occurred, industrially, authorities took 15 days before limiting the Lombardy region to “epidemic in Italy.” Not only “but across Europe,” Fusco says.

“Nobody wanted to take an unpopular measure when Lombardy accounted for 22% of Italy’s GDP.”

The epidemic will also play a rapid role in the 16 first leg rounds of the Atlantean-Valencia Champions League on 19 February in Milan.

For this 59-year-old accountant, “the Bergamasis were abandoned. Responding soon, the authorities saved thousands of lives.”