New restrictions for residents of Italy were implemented on Monday which includes the entire European country being placed on lockdown until further notice to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
WTMJ’s Melissa Barclay has been keeping in contact with business English teacher Dana Rogers since the outbreak hit the region hard a couple of weeks ago.
Rogers grew up in Racine but has lived in Milan for the past 8 years.
Her business focuses on creating personal courses to help professionals in Italy close the gap between the Italian and English languages.
She now says that her business is starting to feel the effects of the coronavirus.
“When I spoke to you a couple of weeks ago, I was still going to my clients but we were respecting the recommend distance. Today (Monday) was actually my first day of 100 percent remote working. My business has seen a small impact from the virus, about a 20 percent decrease in business. However, the rest is being done completely remotely.”
The restrictions in the city have made daily life less than normal too.
“The gym is closed and it has been since the beginning. Anything where you’d have a lot of contact have been closed so, restaurants, museums, church services. The pope did his first teleconference service which has never actually happened before,” said Rogers.
She says the thought of being quarantined at any point in her life never entered her mind and says it’s a scary situation.
“It’s kind of weird and eerie on one hand, but on the other hand if I look outside right now, it looks like the same Milan that I know with a little less people on the streets. It’s weird because it’s easy to forget also that you’re in quarantine,” Rogers said.
Despite all of that, she still says she’s not too concerned about contracting the virus because of her age and good standing health.
“For me, I’m 32 years old. If I contract the coronavirus, I’ll probably have something like a cold and probably won’t even realize that I have it. So, I don’t feel so scared for me. I’m scared for the economy. I’m scared for my business. These kinds of things make me more nervous than probably before.”
Rogers says she doesn’t know anyone with the virus but had clients who had people infected with the virus inside their facilities. She was not at risk.
“It’s probably only a matter of time before you get it because you’re kind of just waiting.”
