On January 12, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the discovery of a new coronavirus, the cause of a lung infection that affected several inhabitants of the city of Wuhan, in the Chinese province of Hubei, whose case was was brought to the attention of WHO on 31 December 2019. On January 30, the first two cases of COVID-19 in Italy were confirmed: in Rome, a couple of Chinese tourists aged 66 and 67 originating from the province of Hubei and landed the night between January 22 and 23 at the Milan airport -Malpensa and who had visited the capital on a tourist bus, tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and were hospitalized at the Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases. The Italian government, the first in Europe to take this decision, has therefore suspended all flights to and from China and declared a state of emergency.