Italy Has More to Fear Than the Coronavirus
The country’s public administration appears poorly equipped to cope with an ambitious use of testing and tracing technology in the next phase.
Reopening?
Photographer: FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFPItaly was the first country in Europe to implement draconian measures to contain the Covid-19 epidemic. As the outbreak slows, the government is weighing when and how to reopen its economy.
There’s not much cause for optimism, sadly. The coalition government of the populist Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party has been much better at enforcing lockdowns than at designing a strategy for what will come later. Italy’s public administration has struggled to distribute subsidies to those affected by the economic crisis. These problems, if sustained, will make it much harder for the country to recover.