“Time goes so slowly,” says Rosa Di Maggio, 30. She’s one of 60 million Italians currently on nationwide lockdown, under Italy’s strict measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19.
While confined to her home in Conversano, a small town in Puglia, in southern Italy, Di Maggio composed a video diary for Yahoo News on Monday, walking viewers through a typical day for herself, her husband, and many Italians in what has become the new normal.
“I spend all my time working on my laptop,” she said. “Cooking, cleaning my house, watching TV. We can’t go outside, except on our balcony. And this is very tough. We feel so stressed, and our body is in pain.”
On March 9, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that he was extending restrictions already in place in northern Italy, to cover the entire country. The measures include travel restrictions, a ban on all public events, the closures of schools and public spaces, and the suspension of religious services, including funerals and weddings.
“This is our darkest hour,” Conte told La Repubblica, echoing the famous epigram from Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister. “But we’ll get through.”