Ben Groundwater was holidaying in Italy with his family when the coronavirus started to take its toll on the northern areas of the European country. Despite that, he was confident that staying in Rome for a holiday was a good idea. But then he witnessed how the COVID-19 crisis forced the country of 60 million in lockdown and has killed over 3,000 people.
Mr Groundwater and his family returned to Australia earlier this week. Given their Italian travel history, he says, he was expecting to be met by strict health screening at the airport.
“Because we were coming from Italy, we had to go to a separate area for enhanced screenings.”
Highlights
- Many parents, worried about the spread of COVID-19 have stopped sending their children to school
- The Australian federal and state governments have decided to keep the schools open despite a decision to limiting indoor and outdoor gatherings to 100 and 500 people respectively
- And Italian expert says a full lockdown, like in China and Italy, is the best way to curb the virus
He says there was medical staff in plastic gowns and surgical masks.
"But all they did was to get the temperature, asked if we had any symptoms of coronavirus and we said ‘no’. They stamped our cards and sent us back out in the normal immigration area where we queued up again with hundreds of people," Mr Groundwater told SBS Italian.
They then collected their luggage and went through immigration, but weren’t asked any more questions before walking “straight out into Australia”. He says the family is self-isolating.
A staff member in protective medical clothing at the Brisbane International Airport. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images AsiaPac
"Why I decided to keep my kids at home"
While the government has decided to keep the schools open, many parents are worried about the spread of COVID-19.
Kylie, a mother of two in a Melbourne-based Italian-Australian family says keeping her kids home is a way to help the school follow social distancing measures.
"We believe that the fewer the contacts within our community, the greater the chance of flattening the curve and while I think keeping the schools open is important to allow some people to send the kids to school,” she said.
“We see [keeping the kids home] as a way of helping the teachers to enact social distancing where possible and we also see it as a way to keep our family and our children safe.”
Silvia, a teacher, is encouraging parents who can keep their children home to do so.
"If you are at home anyway and able to look after your children adequately, do so. It helps to take the heat off the schools and the teachers," she said.
Several independent schools across the country have shut down despite the government’s decision against such a measure.
The Scots School in Albury-Wodonga has decided to shut down all face-to-face teaching.
Source: AAP
“I think we should be learning from the mistakes from other nations and shut everything down as a whole country, not as individual schools”, a parent whose children are enrolled at The Scots School. told SBS Italian, adding that schools should adopt a uniform approach to the crisis.
“If there are full school closures, then one hopes that along with that will come provisions in workplaces regarding leave.”
But Prime Minister Scott Morrison said if schools were closed, health workers would have to stay home to care for their children. He said this could have a severe impact on the economy.
"Tens of thousands of jobs could be lost, if not more," he said.
"The impact on the availability of health workers — a 30 per cent impact on the availability of health workers."
Australia's Chief Medical Officer Dr Brendan Murphy said kids are not vulnerable to the virus.
"We know that where the virus has broken out, a very few kids get the illness. For who gets it, it's mostly mild. They don’t appear to be transmitting among children," he said.
"They are more likely to get it from their parents and closing schools causes major disruptions to societies and families in particular", Dr. Murphy said.
Calls for a full lockdown
The is advising people to practice social distancing to reduce the spread of the virus, which includes staying home if you are feeling unwell, avoiding non-essential large gatherings, keeping a distance of 1.5 metres from other people and minimising contact with at-risk groups, such as older people and people with a pre-existing health condition.
But many in Australia's Italian community say it's not always possible to observe these measures and have called for a full lockdown.
"We must close everything down, we must follow the Chinese model, otherwise it will be a disaster and it's going to go on forever," Stefano La Porta on SBS Italian's Facebook page.
Other Italian-Australians commented on how it's impossible to keep 1.5-metre distance on public transport.
"I refused to go to work because it would have been impossible to respect the 1.5-metre distance recommended by the government, not only on the train I usually take, but also in the office," Azzira Giargi wrote on Facebook.
An Italian expert says a full lockdown, like in Italy and China, is the best way to curb the spread of the virus.
Professor Giovanni Rezza, MD, Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Roma, Italy, also believes a full lockdown, like what implemented by Italy and China, is the best way to curb the spread of the virus.
“The advantage of a full lockdown is that if a person has no contact with other people, the virus struggles to spread, so the rate of contamination should fall automatically," says Professor Giovanni Rezza, who is the Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, in Rome.
He says a partial lockdown leaves room for the virus to contaminate “too many people”.
"We’ll need to see how Australia is able to track down the contacts, the transmissions and do a lot of tests to see if they can find the people that are the source of infection and contamination,” Professor Rezza said.
This is what Mr Groundwater is apprehensive about.
“Just a week before we left Italy, no one there was taking coronavirus too seriously. People were joking about it. They weren't changing their habits or changing their way of life,” he says.
“But then everything changed.”
If you believe you may have contracted the virus, call your doctor, don’t visit, or contact the national Coronavirus Health Information Hotline on 1800 020 080.
If you are struggling to breathe or experiencing a medical emergency, call 000.
