Why Italy First? Health, Geographical and Planning aspects of the Covid-19 outbreak

Abstract

The Covid-19 has hit Italy in February 2020 after its outbreak in China at the beginning of January. But why Italy first among Western countries? What are the conditions that made Italy more vulnerable and the first target of such disease? What characteristics and what diffusion patterns could be highlighted and hypothesized, from the outbreak to the end of March 2020, after containment measures - including a national lock down – were introduced? In this paper we try to provide some answers to these questions, analyzing the issue from the medical, geographical and planning points of view. In particular, we started from a hypothesis of very similar economic, geographical, climatic and environmental conditions of the areas of Wuhan – in Hubei Province in China, the outbreak of the epidemics – and the Po Valley area – in Italy – where most cases and deaths were registered. Adopting an ecological approach, we compared the spatial distribution and pattern of Covid-19-related mortality in Italy with several geographical, environmental and socio-economic variables at Provincial level, analyzing them by means of spatial analytical techniques as LISA – Local Indicators of Spatial Association. Possible evidence relating Covid-19 cases and Nitrogen-related pollutants and land take arise, particularly in the Po Valley area.

A post-pandemic look at short-term tourist accommodations and World Heritage Site management

“…Murgante et al ( 2020) described the significant geographical, planning, and medical effects of COVID-19 in Italy. In addition to the country's high-speed trains, they identified nitrogen-related air pollution as a possible cause of the viral spread in Northern Italy and the Po Valley region (Murgante et al, 2020).…”

Mapping the Pandemic: A Review of GIS-based Spatial Modeling of COVID-19

“…This latter version is also known as a local indicator of spatial as-sociation (LISA) [65]. [37], [38], [59], [14] and [41] in China, [50] and [58] in the United States, and [66] in Mexico, [50] in Italy, [11] in Malaysia and [15] in Bangladesh produced LISA cluster maps to analyze the characteristics of COVID-19 at various spatial levels of aggregation.…”

SARS-CoV-2 in the environment: Modes of transmission, early detection and potential role of pollutions

“…Numerous investigations have attempted to assess the relationship between air pollution and severity of COVID-19 around the world. Some studies show that people living in polluted areas are more vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infections and induced mortality as they are more prone to developing chronic respiratory conditions ( Conticini et al, 2020 ; Murgante et al, 2020 ; Pansini and Fornacca, 2020 ; Zhu et al, 2020 ). Concentrations of PM exceeding limits may increase the susceptibility of COVID-19 infected individuals to respiratory complications while oxidant pollutants may impair the efficiency of lungs to clear the virus ( Qu et al, 2020 ).…”