‘Take it seriously’: Regina-born woman in Italy sends warnings back home

With Italy in lockdown and suffering big numbers of infected and fatalities from COVID-19, a Regina woman living there is sending warnings and advice back home.

Tasha Wahl was born in Regina and grew up in the city but now lives in Bologna, Italy with her husband.

Wahl said living through the pandemic in Italy — which has progressed a few weeks ahead of Saskatchewan — has shown her that people need to take the virus seriously.

“It’s not just old people who are being afflicted by this, it’s not just the immune-compromised, it’s also 20-year-olds. It’s also 30-year-olds needing to be put on respirators, people who have no pre-existing conditions,” Wahl explained from her home in Bologna.

She said the country is in lockdown right now, and people are only allowed to leave their homes for three reasons: To get essentials like groceries, for health reasons like a doctor’s appointment, or to go to work if they need to.

“We have to fill out a legal document before we leave the house and we have to carry it around with us because the police officers stop us and do control checks,” said Wahl.

She actually saw police stop a man on a bicycle the other day and order him back home. Wahl explained that you can be fined or charged if you’re found more than 100 metres from your home without a good enough reason.

The restrictions have made things a little harder for Wahl because she’s five months pregnant and, as a result, she has had to go to all of her appointments by herself.

“I had my ultrasound last week, my anatomy scan, and my husband wasn’t even allowed in the building,” said Wahl.

But Wahl said she understands and the restrictions actually make her feel safer and make her feel like the government is taking this situation seriously.

When things first started in Italy, Wahl said people didn’t think it was that big of a deal. But she was on holiday in the mountains in the north of Italy at the time, and said when she began to make her way home, the trains had started shutting down.

“It just kind of kept getting more serious,” she said. “Then the prime minister came on TV here and it was like, ‘Oh wow, no. Actually this is a really big deal.’ ”

When the virus hit Italy, Wahl said it was the first western country and people still didn’t have an understanding. But they’re taking it seriously now.

“The rest of the world, they could kind of take it from Italy’s example of what we’re going through and the stories that we’re sharing,” said Wahl.

Wahl’s husband works in health care and she has friends who do as well. She said she’s hearing stories of hospitals full of people, and older people packed into hallways where all health-care providers can do is make them comfortable for the time being.

A couple of weeks ago, Wahl said she was on her computer and started seeing posts on social media from back home, saying the same things she had heard at the beginning of the outbreak in Italy, that it’s just a flu or that it’s a conspiracy and not a big deal. Since then, she says she has seen a shift.

“I was really proud of the Canadian government to take it so seriously. And just the switch in people from Saskatchewan to start moving from, ‘It’s the flu. It’s a conspiracy’ to, ‘OK, no, we need to be social distancing.’ I feel like the switch in Canada has come a lot quicker than in other countries,” said Wahl.

She’s happy the governments have taken measures, but is still warning people in Saskatchewan that they can’t take COVID-19 lightly. She said she thinks about her parents who live in northern Saskatchewan, and that it only takes one person even in rural areas.

“It just takes one person who’s infected driving up and going to the supermarket and getting gas and shaking someone’s hand, and it can spread, because that’s what happened in Italy,” said Wahl.

She said we’ve got the technology so people don’t have to go out to visit friends. She said people need to understand that the sooner they take the virus seriously, the sooner it’ll be over.