Italy was the first country in Europe to be badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

The first country to show its hospitals overrun with the sick and dead with COVID-19.

The first to call an unprecedented national lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus. The first to begin criminal investigations into deaths in care homes.

Italy warned its European neighbours to prepare.

Now, more than five weeks into its lockdown, Italy’s foreign minister is warning of the long road ahead before life can return to normal.

“When a region doesn’t know where to put its coffins, it’s going through a moment in history you can’t come back from,” Luigi Di Maio told Sky News.

“We’ll only be able to go back to normal once we have discovered a vaccine.”

Italy’s next deadline on 3 May extends the lockdown to nearly eight weeks, but Italians are no clearer on what that will mean then.

Unlike France, the government here has not detailed a road map out of this crisis, and Mr Di Maio will not commit to what phase two will look like, or when measures will be lifted.

“I want to say one thing and this applies to everyone, not only to Italy. We will only be able to go back to normality when we have discovered a vaccine.

“To find this vaccine, we need a great international alliance.”

He continued: “If we discover a vaccine by joining forces as soon as possible, there will no longer be a phase two and three, but we will be able to return to embrace and hug as before.”

A trial is to begin at Oxford University next month for a vaccine produced in Italy.

If successful, it has optimistically been predicted that it could be available by September for healthcare workers in the UK.

But for freedoms and travel to fully resume, this could take far longer.

Mr Di Maio would not commit to Italy’s borders reopening by the summer.

He said: “Making predictions about the summer is premature at this time.

“As the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I say to Italians living abroad: stay there – because at this stage we need to stop the contagion.

“And if that’s the case for Italian citizens abroad, it unfortunately also applies to foreign citizens.”

These travel restrictions and border closures will cost Italy badly.

Nearly 15% of the country’s workforce is employed in the tourism sector, and it is worth nearly €230bn (£200bn) a year to Italy’s economy, 13.2% of its GDP.

This year, tourism in Italy is predicted to drop to the same level as the 1960s, according to federation Assoturismo.

The speed at which this crisis escalated in Europe saw borders close as countries turned inwards to fight their own domestic emergencies.

It was not their European friends who came to Italy’s aid, but the less likely geopolitical partners, China and Russia.

EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen has said the EU needs to offer a heartfelt apology for not being there for Italy at the start of the pandemic.

She said: “You cannot overcome a pandemic of this speed and this scale without the truth.

“The truth about everything – the numbers, the science, the outlook, but also about our own actions.

“Yes, it is true that no one was really ready for this. It is also true that too many were not there on time when Italy needed a helping hand at the very beginning.

“And yes, for that, it is right that Europe as a whole offers a heartfelt apology.”

After intense talks, European finance ministers have now proposed a €500bn (£435bn) recovery fund to help the impact on countries from this pandemic.

But there are divisions between the struggling economies of Southern Europe, worst hit by the outbreak, and its more fiscally frugal northern neighbours.

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