ROME (AP) — Pope Francis and Italy’s president have marked the nation’s first annual day to honor doctors, nurses and other health care workers, exactly a year after the nation’s first known native case of COVID-19 emerged. In a message to honor those caring for COVID-19 patients, Frances hailed the “generous involvement, at times heroic, of the profession lived as mission.” On the evening of Feb. 20, 2020, a hospital in Codogno, northern Italy confirmed a 38-year-old Italian man was infected with the coronavirus. The man had no links to anyone who had been in China, where the COVID-19 outbreak first erupted. A year on, Italy has so far seen more than 95,000 known dead, the second-high coronavirus toll in Europe after Britain.
