![]() People told me I was making history,” he said in a phone interview. “I realized this was a pretty exceptional thing. Instead, on March 4, 22-year-old de Giuseppe was at work when he received another WhatsApp message from his professor: “Excellent evaluation. ![]() Lessio de Giuseppe, a student at the University of Bologna, the oldest in the world, learned via a WhatsApp message from his professor that his graduation would not take place as planned – with a dissertation in front of a university commission. “I thought it would be of great help to keep them busy and thinking about their favorite food, which is often tied to childhood memories, family and home.” She says she is a terrible cook but that she hoped to keep friends busy and distracted. Livia Sala, a 35-year-old from Turin who works in a family-owned business, started asking friends on WhatsApp to share stories about food, or favorite recipes for her to reproduce and share with the group. “My heart melted seeing how technology that us young people take for granted can become such an important tool in critical moments,” Zadra said.Įven events ranging from university dissertation discussions to a dinner with friends have gone virtual. Relatives at home enjoyed a much-needed laugh seeing their “nonno” or “nonna” grapple with modern devices for the first time, with some of the residents holding the iPad up to their ears instead of looking into the camera, she said. Love is also under fire in the age of the coronavirus and anyone leaving home to see a partner risks being fined or even jailed.Ĭecilia Zadra, a 28-year-old psychologist who works in a elderly care facility in a heavily affected area in the north of the country, this week helped residents, some older than 90, use iPads to make their first-ever video calls to family. Under the latest restrictions Rome has banned visiting friends and relatives and having meals with them, unless they need assistance. It is common for grandparents in Italy to be the primary caretakers of children when parents are at work, but the quarantines and higher risk posed by the disease for people over 60 is driving the two age groups apart. Messaging platforms help individuals feel closer to relatives, in a country where tight-knit extended families play a crucial societal function. There are now more than 17,600 infections in Italy, and nearly 150,000 around the world, according to a Reuters tally. Responding to the spread of the disease in Europe’s worst affected country, the Italian government has banned all non-essential travel and public gatherings until April 3 and shuttered most businesses and services. “Given the suffering of families we have reached out to a telecoms company to activate a system of video calls and provide our patients with tablets that they can use to speak with their relatives,” said Marco Resta, deputy head of the intensive care unit at Policlinico San Donato in Milan. But nurses and doctors at some Italian hospitals try to arrange brief video calls every day for people in the coronavirus wards, sources said. Hospital visits for those who are severely ill due to coronavirus are not allowed. “For both patients and families having a little chat is incredibly important to stay positive and hopeful,” said the relative of one coronavirus patient in Milan. In some cases it is also giving them remote access to some mental healthcare providers, or even allowing hospitalized coronavirus patients to interact with loved ones. ![]() Italians say staying in touch through these platforms is helping them cope with isolation and anxiety, in a country that has already reported more than 1,260 deaths due to the virus. ![]() It is not just an explosion of funny memes in groups, or idle chit-chat between bored people stuck at home. A spokeswoman for Microsoft did not provide statistics for Skype, but said the company had recorded a 100% growth in usage of its messaging application Teams in Italy. Users in Italy are placing 20% more calls and sending 20% more messages on WhatsApp compared to a year ago, the company told Reuters. As 60 million Italians face a coronavirus country-wide lockdown, many daily interactions among family, friends and colleagues have moved to messaging platforms such as Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp and Microsoft’s Corp Skype. ![]()
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