ONLY ON AP Codogno: one town's struggle to survive

Описание: (20 Feb 2021) At a car parts company in northern Italy, three women are struggling to overcome the pain and anxiety of a year of living at the centre of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first case of locally spread COVID-19 in Europe was found in their small town of Codogno , one year ago on February 20th 2020.
The next day the area became a red zone, locked down and cut off from the rest of Italy with soldiers standing at roadblocks keeping anyone from entering of leaving.  
It was just the beginning for the people of this town of 16,000 about 60 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of Milan.
At the MTA Codogno headquarters the 24-hour, seven-day- a-week production line came to a halt.
The company produces fuses, distribution units, connectors and terminals that go into dashboards and displays on cars and trucks providing parts to some of the world's most well-known car companies Volvo, Renault, Ferrari, BMW, Fiat-Chrysler and Jaguar, to name a few.
MTA is a family-owned business.
During World War II, Antonio Falchetti escaped the port city of Genoa to get away from allied bombings taking his family to the quiet countryside town of Codogno where he launched his business.
It grew to be an international success with production sites in two locations in Italy and eight abroad.  
His son Umberto inherited the business which is now run by his grandson and namesake and his granddaughter Maria Vittoria Falchetti who serves as Marketing Director.
On February 21st the Codogno headquarters and factory with its 620 employees was obliged to down tools, and the Falchetti family team swung into action pressuring authorities to let them reopen.  
Car company assembly lines around the globe were waiting for their products they insisted as they lobbied for permission to allow at least the workers living within the red zone to come to work.
A week later on March 9th the factory reopened with 30-percent of the employees.
But the family's troubles were not over, as shortly after opening the company's President Umberto Falchetti fell ill with COVID and a week later passed away.
Maria Vittoria Falchetti was not the only one in the headquarters to lose a family member, Assembly Line Manager Angela Cassone's mother fell ill with COVID and Cassone caught it from her.  
Cassone's mother died the same week as Umberto Falchetti.  
She recovered from COVID at home but it was two months before she had a negative COVID test and could return to work.
"I experienced this very directly," Cassone explained as she stood by her desk in a glassed-in workspace on the middle of the factory floor, her mask pulled tightly over her mouth and nose and her eyes welling up, "looking back one year later I can say that the wounds are still open."
According to Codogno City Hall figures, 154 people died of COVID in March 2020, three times as many deaths as a year earlier – an indication of the virus's devastating effects.
Simultaneously in just the first two weeks of the lockdown, companies in the area lost 100 million euros in profits.
Assembly line worker Eva Martini was among the 30-percent of the workers who returned to the job after a week at home.  
"When we came back, I had a knot in my stomach, I was very fearful, but after the third day that we were back here we all understood that we could work safely," Martini explained.
Despite her fear over returning, she believes her work saved her noting that some of her colleagues who were unable to return suffered from depression.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...