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Flanked by a police escort, a paramedic emergency vehicle, with its emergency lights on, drives through the city towards the main hospital.
Christmas emergency delivery to medical staff.
A small green refrigerated bag rushed into Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital, followed by two policemen.
the COVID-19 The vaccine has reached the city of Bergamo, in northern Italy.
This city, which was devastated by the pandemic, can learn to breathe again.
Earlier this year, Dr. Roberto Cosentini oversaw what looked like a war zone without bombs or bullets.
It is early, of course, but the vaccination process has begun.
The first symbolic dose given to the city’s chief medical officer, Guido Marinoni, who cares for patients and the most vulnerable, as well as their medical caregivers, is a priority here.
Opportunities for taking vaccination photos are far from those close to the chaos that engulfed hospital emergency rooms and shocked the world in March.
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March 2020: Sky’s award-winning report from Bergamo
As a team, covered from head to toe in PPE, we had no idea what to expect.
Back then, no one really knew anything, and no one had ever seen emergency rooms and intensive care units with patients lined up on ventilators, slowly dying in front of our eyes.
Back then, if you were unlucky enough to be admitted to the ICU, you had, at best, a 50/50 chance of survival.
I remember working it on our car, having read the daily and weekly mortality figures published by the Italian Ministry of Health.
That was then. The world has now been completely engulfed by the virus and the world is fighting back.
The vaccine was delivered to the doctors at the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo
After the most difficult 10 months in living medical memory, front-line personnel who have struggled and survived can enjoy the future.
They sure are exhausted. But now they can see the light. For so long, there was nothing but darkness.
Constant shifts. Constant death Constant feelings of personal failure.
“Now we realize that maybe we are not enough,” Lorenzo Grazioli, an intensive care anesthetist, told me at the time. It scared the hell out of me.
Outside, I remember talking to myself.
Basically, in desperation, I said that if a hospital as wealthy and endowed as Pope Giovanni is invaded, what about the world, what about the UK? I had never felt so helpless and scared by everyone I knew.
Like I say, that was then.
Now there’s a vaccine release and one of the first to do so in Bergamo is Dr. Roberto Cosentini, the emergency care chief, who, perhaps with a cooler head, supervised what looked like a war zone without bombs or bullets.
Roberto is a friend now. We don’t talk much, but it’s not necessary. His dream of having the opportunity to savor a future where the virus can be defeated is being achieved.
I can’t really explain how much I feel for him and his staff. They let us into the hospital to send a warning message to the world even though they were losing the battle. No professional wants to do that.
But they knew they had to warn everyone.
Now he hopes we can all put this behind us.
He told us: “I think today is a historic day for human beings because it is the first big step to win the battle against the virus.
“Before we only had to react to the security measures, up and down according to the measures, but now we hope to turn the page and think about the future.”
A paramedic emergency vehicle flanked by police delivered the vaccine.
The beautiful old city of Bergamo rises above its modern sister. Both the new and the old city were engulfed by the virus and thousands died here.
Survivors of this virus storm can now walk the historic cobbled streets, stop for take-out coffee, and sit in the extremely quiet and socially distanced Venetian squares to bask in the winter sun.
In March I met Michele and Serena, both in their 70s and both terrified. They crouched in isolation to see it. Now they are much more relaxed. The dream of a vaccine realized.
“The people of Bergamo are known in Italy as one of the most hard-working and passionate people, one of the mottos here is ‘Mola Mia’ (never give up) and the people of Bergamo have not given up,” they say.
“They have reinvented themselves.”
For Michele and Serena, the dream of a vaccine comes true
Bergamo, Italy and most of Europe are still struggling with coronavirus of course, but the vaccine program now deployed across the continent at least it is giving space for country leaders to plan for the future.
Giorgio Gori, the popular mayor of Bergamo, who imposed the closure of the original city and brought his two daughters back home from the UK because the British government did not close or took the virus seriously, is now revitalized.
“It is a true turning point, because now we can think about the exit point of this pandemic, we can plan a recovery time, we can plan to restart,” he says.
“We know that we will probably have to wait a few months and we will probably have to face a third wave, but now we have great hope: we see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
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March 2020: Italian Mayor’s Warning to Great Britain on COVID-19
Finally, he can see a future without the curse of COVID-19 looming over him and his city.
Where there was fear and pain, a new sense of optimism spreads across Europe and the world.
Finally, 2020 has given everyone something to celebrate.
