About a year ago, the coronavirus broke out in Lombardy, the economic heart of Italy.
The first hotspot in Europe was identified here, and headlines about a region whose health system was on the verge of collapse went around the world for weeks.
The Russian corona vaccine Sputnik V is now to be produced here from July, as the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce announced on Tuesday - even though it has not yet received approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).