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When the mayor of Roccafiorita received a phone call in October informing him that an employee of his office had tested positive for Covid-19, his heart sank.
Nestled in the woods at the foot of Mount Kalfa, Roccafiorita is the smallest village in southern Italy. The average age of its 187 inhabitants is over 60 years. If Covid spreads among the population, the village could disappear.
“When the phone rang, it was like lightning on a sunny day,” said Orlando Concept, the mayor. “With this second wave coming, for a second I thought we might actually be wiped off the map.”
Last week, the Italian government introduced a semi-lockdown to combat the spread of the coronavirus, after an average of more than 30,000 new cases per day. Most of the attention has been paid to big cities like Milan and Naples, but across the country thousands of small towns are struggling to survive.
Of the 8,000 Italian towns, villages and cities, almost 70 percent have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. Two thousand have fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, and in some places the birth of a child is so rare that the village bells ring to celebrate the news. Dozens of these villages have been declared coronavirus “red zones”, which means that the risk of infection is particularly high and people are unable to enter or leave.
Ghost city
“Demographic desertification had already affected these cities before Covid,” said Mario Alvano, general secretary of the National Association of Italian Municipalities in Sicily. “These are small villages that were already destined to become ghost towns in a few decades, where the birth rate is 30 times lower than the death rate. Now Covid risks accelerating their disappearance “.
Salvatore Occhino, born and raised in Roccafiorita, perhaps would never have imagined that after the Second World War another terrifying experience would be in store for him, this time in the form of a pandemic. Occhino is a living monument in the city, not only because at 93 he is his oldest person, but above all because despite his age he continues to take care of his fields.
“I’m worried,” he said. “If Covid hits hard, there will be no one in Roccafiorita. My heart cries when I think of all the sacrifices we have made to keep this village alive. Now we can only put ourselves in the Lord’s hands. “
red zone
In at least four regions, Covid-19 has hit small villages, including Galati Mamertino in Sicily, which was designated a red zone on November 1 after 157 of its 2,400 inhabitants tested positive. Experts agree that outbreaks of this type are the result of the close proximity between citizens, typical of social life in these areas.
In 2020 three people died and a child was born in Roccafiorita
“In the tiny villages, relations between relatives and friends are intense,” said Tullio Prestileo, an infectious disease doctor at the Benfratelli hospital in Palermo. “Here the impression that a friend or relative could infect us is much lower than in the big cities. It is often believed that the isolated location of these villages is itself a form of protection against transmission and that the problem is urban. That’s why when an outbreak occurs in these cities, the transmission is more widespread. “
After the Second World War, Roccafiorita began a trend of depopulation as many of its inhabitants left for the United States in search of work. In 2020 three people died and a child was born in Roccafiorita.
The phenomenon is not limited to rural areas: births nationwide are at an all-time low since the unification of Italy. For the first time in 90 years, the Italian population (excluding the foreign population) has dropped to about 55 million, according to the national statistics agency.
Globally, Italy ranks behind only Japan in the proportion of the elderly among the general population. The result has been an increase in the number of ghost towns, where most of the houses are abandoned. In Roccafiorita 40 percent of the houses are uninhabited.
Savoca, a small town in eastern Sicily. On November 4, Rome designated Sicily as high-risk, mainly due to the lack of health facilities and beds in the intensive care units
Asylum seekers
Over the years, in an effort to resurrect these small towns, mayors have adopted various strategies. Some villages have opened the doors of vacant houses to asylum seekers. Others are practically giving away abandoned houses to anyone who wants to relocate.
Last year, the mayor of Sambuca – 5,000 inhabitants – received over 94,000 emails from around the world after publicly announcing the sale of abandoned houses for 1 euro. Sambuca, in the province of Agrigento, has just been declared a “red zone” after an outbreak caused 130 positive cases and eight deaths.
“The sale of our houses for 1 euro was a symbolic gesture to bring people back to Sambuca, because the villages are made up of people, not houses,” said Deputy Mayor Giuseppe Cacioppo. “Believe me, the loss of a person in an aging small town is felt more deeply here than in the cities.”
“The death of one of us is not just a number,” said Fabio Orlando, president of the Roccafiorita city council. “It is a loss of history, a house that is abandoned and a path that is closed and forgotten forever.”
Fortunately, the threat of an outbreak in Roccafiorita has been averted, for now. A recent round of swabs carried out on the whole population was negative.
Hospitals
On November 4, Rome designated Sicily as a high-risk “orange zone”, mainly due to the lack of health facilities and beds in the intensive care units. Small towns have paid the highest price for cutting the costs of the southern healthcare system, where more than 40 hospitals have closed in recent years.
The nearest Covid hospital is more than 1 hour and 40 minutes from Roccafiorita.
From the village’s point of view, the light at the end of the tunnel seems distant. The elderly villagers are hoping for a vaccine. But Salvatore Occhino knows that a long and arduous winter awaits us. He says it in his own way, in a recent poem. It’s about how Roccafiorita has changed, how the streets were once dark and are now illuminated. It ends like this:
“Now I greet you all, Good evening / We will see who survives in Spring”
(“Now I greet you all, good evening. We will see those who survive in the spring”) – Guardian
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