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Rome (AP) - A year ago, military trucks with coffins from corona dead rolled through the northern Italian city of Bergamo.

Today people in Italy celebrate the first national day of remembrance for the victims of the pandemic, which hit the country harder than many others in Europe with the first virus wave in 2020.

As then, Bergamo is at the center.

Prime Minister Mario Draghi wants to travel from Rome to symbolically open a memorial forest for the pandemic deaths in the city of around 120,000 inhabitants around noon.

«We wanted to develop a monument that is something living.

We came up with trees.

The new trees are a sign that we will not forget those who are dead, ”reports Marco Boschini, one of the fathers of the project that is being built in a park near the large“ Papa Giovanni XXIII ”hospital.

Boschini is the coordinator of the Comuni Virtuosi municipal association, which had been driving the plan for the memorial forest since last summer.

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“More than 6,000 people died in the first wave of the pandemic in Bergamo province.

In the city alone there were around 750 deaths, ”says Boschini.

Around 750 new trees and bushes are to be planted for them.

A few dozen have already been placed.

On Thursday, a tree that was donated from Biccari in Apulia in southern Italy is to be symbolically celebrated.

In March 2020, so many, mostly old patients had died in the city with the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which was still new at the time, that there was no longer enough space in morgues and crematoriums.

The military sent trucks to transport the dead to other areas.

The images of these columns went around the world as a symbol of horror.

The Bergamo area was the European epicenter of the crisis.

At first it was thought that the virus would rage in other parts of the world, reported Mayor Giorgio Gori.

"But by then it had already arrived here and exploded with uncanny violence."

The focus was on the north of the country, especially Lombardy.

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In Italy, with its 60 million people, the first strict lockdown began on March 10th.

Nevertheless, at the end of March, the Mediterranean country had a high at that time of almost 1,000 deaths in 24 hours.

It was not until May that the locks were gradually eased.

A rather relaxed summer was followed by the resurgence of the virus in autumn.

Now experts in Italy are talking about the third wave, as in Germany.

So far, well over 100,000 people have officially died from the virus.

Bergamo, Lombardy and many other regions are again red zones with the strictest restrictions.

Since people should leave their homes there as little as possible, they have to watch the memorial services with Draghi on the Internet and on television.

In the middle of the pandemic, the government of Giuseppe Conte in Rome was overthrown in the dispute over corona financial aid at the beginning of 2021.

Ex-central bank chief Draghi came to power with the mandate to finally turn the tide with a multi-party cabinet - and to accelerate the vaccination campaign against the pathogen.

Because not a few experts give Italy's politics with a view to the health care in the crisis only moderate marks.

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“Something fundamental has changed in the Italian healthcare system.

Namely the awareness that it has to change, ”says Stephan Ortner, director of the Eurac Research Center in Bolzano, which also researches Corona.

Basically, they are proud that Italy guarantees every citizen the supply.

"But that there must be more doctors outside of the hospitals, that massive investments in infrastructure and employees are required," that became clear.

Less bureaucracy and more digitization are needed.

The Italy expert at the Teneo Institute, Wolfango Piccoli, also speaks of the fact that one year after the Bergamo disaster, important changes - whether in political processes or in dealing with virus data - are at best “work in progress”, still in progress .

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210318-99-868530 / 2