The painful lessons of Italy’s devastating coronavirus outbreak

Impose strict containment measures while there's still time. The phrase sums up the advice to Greece from Marco De Ponte, general secretary of ActionAid Italy. In an interview with Kathimerini, the nongovernmental organization official casts light on the reasons for Italy's devastating death toll from the novel coronavirus.

What went so terribly wrong in Italy? Can you give us the main reasons for the current tragedy?

I don't think something went terribly wrong in Italy; a virus is a virus. The only thing is that most of the people in Italy didn't get tested unless they went to hospital. That was actually a mistake because in the hospitals people get infected from one another. It's not that the virus is particularly deadly here. The number of people that are seriously sick is more or less like in any other country, but we tested less people. People...