MILAN — As the coronavirus continues to make headlines globally, on Friday the health crisis got even bigger attention in Italy as six new cases were identified in Codogno, a town a one-hour drive from Milan.
A 38-year-old man and his pregnant wife are the most worrying cases, with the former currently hospitalized in intensive care. The man is an employee at the Unilever facility located in the nearby town of Casalpusterlengo, where he is reported as working in the research and development department.
According to media reports, at the moment 60 employees operating in the same department are isolated in the facility for safety reasons and waiting to get tested before being released. In particular, one woman has already been hospitalized and kept in isolation while the overall Unilever complex shut down its activity for the day, including the canteen as it’s one of the common spaces and accommodates more than 300 employees.
Unilever was not reachable for a comment at press time.
Meanwhile, investigations are trying to retrace all the movements of the infected man over the past two weeks. On Friday morning, many papers reported that he was infected during a dinner with a colleague who had returned from a trip to

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