Virus lockdown means Italy's old are isolated from relatives

ROME (AP) — Natalina De Santis’ three adult children come to her front door, bringing food to keep her healthy and books to relieve her boredom, but she doesn’t let them in any more.

Widowed a few months ago and living alone, the 83-year-old resident of Rome is so afraid of catching the coronavirus that she foregoes all visits as the disease that is especially deadly for the elderly grips Italy. She insists they leave their care packages outside her door and then steps onto her balcony to wave to them.

“If I get sick, what would my children do?” she said in a telephone interview. “They’d have to come, they won’t be able to leave me alone. So, to avoid all this, I stay in my home.”

Still, De Santis takes comfort in the fact that she gets to see her children, even if they are on the street two floors below.

Elderly people all over the country are being separated from their loved ones as Italy has put in place drastic restrictions on everyday life to tame its dramatic surge in contagions. In a country with one of the world’s oldest populations, the viral outbreak is taking its toll on family relationships, that bedrock of Italian life.

Two months ago, Caroline Santoro’s 76-year-old father, his dementia worsening, was moved from his home in Rome where he lived with his wife to an adult care facility. Her 70-year-old mother then drove every day to visit him.

“Putting him in the residence was already a dramatic passage for her. But seeing him once a day was the only act of consolation for such a brutal turn” of events, Santoro said, speaking by telephone from home on the day that Italy implemented a nationwide lockdown in a desperate bid to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Then, last week, her family received a devastating notice from the care facility: visits to residents were now...