Penn Hills native hunkering down in Italy as coronavirus spreads

Penn Hills native James Zanella said he’s not overly concerned — yet — about living roughly 40 miles away from the epicenter of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak.

What worries him most is that Italian police have locked down 10 towns in the Lombardy region, which borders the Trentino region. Zanella lives in Trentino’s capital of Trento.

“No one can exit or enter the towns,” he said. “They even said quietly you can be arrested and put in jail if you try to leave. That’s the most worrisome aspect for me right now. Here, thankfully, in Trentino it’s been rather calm.”

Zanella, 41, a graduate of Penn Hills High School and the University of Pittsburgh, has been living in Italy for more than a decade and teaches European history at a high school in Trento. He moved to Italy, where he has family, to finish his master’s degree and found work teaching while attending the University of Trento. He now has dual citizenship in Italy and the United States.

At least six people have died from the virus in Italy, where the number of confirmed cases has reached 219, The New York Times reported. Coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, has infected more than 79,000 people across the globe and killed more than 2,400, mainly Chinese.

Local relief agencies have sent medical supplies to China, and Pittsburgh-based PPG on Monday announced it will donate 1 million yuan (the equivalent of $143,400) for relief efforts. PPG also committed to matching donations from its employees. The company has nearly 4,000 employees working at 16 manufacturing sites, eight offices and four technical centers in China.

Zanella said the virus seemed to spread to Italy overnight. On Friday, he said, he learned of the first confirmed case in the Lombardy region. By Sunday, he learned the number of confirmed cases had soared to 150.

The Italian government has shut down the Venice Carnival, a festival held each year in the days leading to Lent, and similar celebrations held in smaller towns. Officials canceled soccer matches and closed schools. Schools in Zanella’s area are closed at least until Monday. Austrian officials refused to let a train from Italy cross its border.

Ken Walters, spokesman for Duquesne University, said no one has been diagnosed with the virus at the school’s Rome campus so far, but the university is taking precautions. They include restricting travel to areas where the virus has been reported, suspending trips scheduled for those areas and following advisories on how best to prevent exposure.

“The information has been been snowballing over the last few days,” Zanella said, adding that he’s trying to remain indoors as much as possible.

“I’m isolating myself,” he said. “Right now, I’m at home. I’m not going out. I went to my girlfriend’s over the weekend, and she wanted to go to the movies. I said, let’s not go. I’m trying to avoid crowds. I’ve been washing my hands a lot and trying to avoid contact with people as best I can.”

He said he’s unsure what he might do if the virus spreads into his region.

His parents still live in Penn Hills, and he has other family in the Pittsburgh region, but he said he has no plans of returning to the United States. He noted that the flu kills hundreds of people annually in Italy, and the coronavirus death rate in Italy has so far been low.

“They’re shutting everything down,” he said. “That’s what’s worrisome, also. All of us will be quarantined. My family comes from a small village here in the mountains. I thought about maybe going up into the mountains and staying with my relatives to be around less people.”